


The secrets that you keep

by josephides



Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: F/M, Sex, everyone has a tragic backstory, werewolves are horny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:42:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25732306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides
Summary: She had known at some point that Bran’s migrations strategy was going to bite her in the ass. She had thought she might be lucky, after Juste had joined the pack and hadn’t blinked twice at her. She knew now she had been ludicrously complacent. Her end was now standing in her living room.
Relationships: Bran Cornick/Leah Cornick
Comments: 27
Kudos: 264





	The secrets that you keep

**Author's Note:**

> I think we can all agree that in terms of world building, this is totally implausible.

Leah walked into her house with her car keys in her teeth, two grocery bags under her arms and one in each hand, very little focus on anything other than getting to the kitchen before the eggs, balanced precariously on top, tumbled onto the hardwood floor. When she saw who was in her living room, however, she nearly dropped the lot.

She had known at some point that Bran’s migrations policy was going to bite her in the ass. She had thought she might be lucky, after Juste had joined the pack and hadn’t blinked twice at her. She knew now she had been _ludicrously_ complacent. Her end was now standing in her living room.

Aline, her sister, had turned white as a sheet at the sight of her. Leah could only imagine she was no better. They stared at each other for a long moment, each seeing the other in an utterly unfamiliar context, trying to reconcile it. 

Then, Aline made a small movement towards her, opened her mouth to speak, and Leah frantically shook her head, panic setting in and overtaking the shock, the absolute shock, of seeing the woman whom she had grown up with.

Aline froze, hands up in the air, as if she had been intending to reach out and embrace her.

Leah dropped the car keys from her mouth into the bowl on the side table and cleared her throat, face blazing. “Hello,” she said loudly, purely for the benefit of the man she could hear in the kitchen. She picked her next words carefully. “I’m Leah Cornick. I don’t imagine my mate mentioned me.” To her own ears, she sounded false. The name she had not been born with but had used for more than two centuries felt foreign on her lips.

Bran stuck his head through the kitchen and scowled at her. “Behave,” he said sternly, managing to make it sound affectionate, though Leah knew he truly meant it. Under normal circumstances, Leah did not take well to finding strange females alone with him. For the first time, this played to her advantage. Bran mistook her expression, her tone, for unhappy, jealous surprise.

To Aline, he smiled. “Aline, this is my wife, as I’m sure you have surmised from her charming introduction. Do you take sugar?”

Color had, thankfully, rushed to Aline’s cheeks, much as it had to Leah’s, as if she had guessed the implication of their dynamic. Her eyes lowered, submissively, a female werewolf who knew her place.

“ _Oui, merci_ ,” she said. Bran ducked back into the kitchen with a last fulminating look at Leah. Her sister turned to stare at her. _Husband?_ she mouthed. Out loud, she said, in accented English this time, “Leah, was it?” She had no problem using Leah’s name. Aline had always been the better actress.

Leah exhaled, forcing her shoulders to relax, and nodded. “Nice to meet you. If you’ll excuse me,” she said, gesturing with the bags in her hands. Everything suddenly felt ten times heavier than it had before.

Bran emerged from the kitchen, carrying two mugs of coffee and held the door open for her. “We’ll go into my office now,” he said, as if apologizing for the _faux pas_ of conducting business in their living room when really he was telling Leah that Aline was ‘Marrok business’ and he wasn’t inviting strange females into their home for a rendezvous.

Leah smiled insincerely at him. “Leave the door open,” she said, because that would be what she would say. Normally.

*

In the kitchen, alone, she had a small meltdown, crouched on the floor with her hands over her face. In the last few weeks, she had lorded her trustworthiness over Bran after he had thought she had betrayed the pack. After he had planned to have her killed. She had made it clear she may have forgiven him but she would not _forget_.

Now she had just lied to him. Monumentally. She couldn’t ignore the irony.

She stood, decisively. She would just have to tell him. Would have to bear the brunt of his derision. His anger. She had imagined this scenario many times. She was prepared.

Her hand was on the kitchen door before she pulled it away, as if burnt. Maybe she didn’t have to tell him. That Aline was here didn’t mean all of their shared history would need to be unpacked. It was in the past. Was a two-hundred-year-old lie really a lie any more - wasn’t it just history?

 _Bran_ was allowed to forget his past. Why couldn’t she? Why did it have to be a big deal? Her secrets hadn’t impacted them before – it didn’t have to now. She had always made sure of that.

Leah deliberated, as she always did. She unpacked the groceries. Started preparing dinner, briskly. It wasn’t really a lie, after all, she told herself. Just an omission. And, in the beginning, it really _hadn’t_ been such a big deal. They had both agreed that their pasts were not necessary to their future, an edict that Bran had no doubt felt benefited him more than it did her, not realizing that she carried a burden too. It was more than a hundred years after they had mated that her father’s name had even been mentioned in her presence. It was _irrelevant_.

No, Leah decided, switching suddenly, she _had_ to tell him. She _had_ to.

Decision made once again, Leah wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and then walked down the hallway to his office and stood there. He had left the door open, taking her at her word, and he looked up when she came to stand in the doorway, a query on his face. Aline was sitting in front of his desk, her hands folded on her lap, eyes down. It was the pose of a woman well-trained in the art of behaving decorously in front of dominant males. 

“Bran,” she began, and then stopped. She didn’t know where to go next. Her sister had moved only slightly, tilting her chin in Leah’s direction but not looking her way. She wasn’t going to give Leah away.

Her husband looked at her, his querulous look turning to irritation. He was annoyed that she had interrupted, she thought. He only left the door open so she could hear the conversation, so she could be reassured that there was nothing going on. It wasn’t an invitation for her to join in.

Bran tolerated her jealousy – thought she was ridiculous, that he would never ‘cheat’ on her, refusing to understand that the physical wasn’t all she was concerned about. Yes, she had his body, but she didn’t have anything else.

Every time he laughed with another woman it was a knife in her heart.

Bitterness overwhelmed her. 

“Remember Charles and Anna are coming for dinner,” Leah said, shortly.

He nodded. “I will.”

Then, to show him how fine she was, Leah leaned forward to grab the doorknob and pulled his office door closed.

Bran was allowed to forget his history. So was Leah, she decided. It hadn’t been a problem and she was determined that it wouldn’t be a problem in the future.

Besides, Jean Chastel was dead. How could a dead man hurt them?

*

Leah had many issues with Anna.

She could be honest with herself and acknowledge that most were those born from jealousy and spite. After two centuries of being nothing more than a terrifying, sullen killer for his father, Anna had arrived and magically given Charles a personality. Leah didn’t like this demonstration of the power of a mating of hearts as well as spirits. It burned her.

Second, the magic of an Omega made Anna well-liked and cherished within the pack, particularly by Bran, who saw in his daughter-in-law a useful tool to be deployed for the benefit of his people. Oh, and of course Bran loved her, too. But Bran loving other creatures was not new to her. Her mate’s heart was only cold for her.

She could be grateful at least that this love was platonic, truly that of a father to a daughter. Not that she had much experience with that herself. 

A combination of all of these things created Leah a bigger problem: Anna had become involved in the family business. That is to say, Bran’s business, the business of the Marrok. Which meant it inevitably became a topic of conversation when Bran’s family congregated.

That evening, Leah endured a conversation about her sister, as if she was on the side-lines, when Bran made his big announcement about ‘Chastel’s daughter’ coming to live in North America.

Leah hid her face behind a large glass of wine. A very good Malbec, in fact. The jolt of surprise at Jean Chastel’s name was entirely natural.

“I can only imagine how she suffered,” Anna said, delicately, the prongs of her fork moving the food around her plate.

Sympathetic, more than sympathetic, Charles reached over to stroke a hand down Anna’s back. Leah watched him do this with, as ever, a degree of astonishment that he was capable of gentle affection. “She must have been a strong woman,” he mused.

Her mate inclined his head and twirled up a large forkful of linguine. “I suspect she is. She’s certainly very controlled.”

Bran was eating as if starved. She had cooked a large roast chicken, shredded it with forks and dropped the meat and some of the garlicky-oils from roasting over freshly cooked linguine, finished with toasted pine-nuts and fresh chili and parsley. It was one of Bran’s favorite meals. She had also prepared a large green salad and made dinner rolls from scratch. The dinner rolls had been the consequence of her nerves. She had frozen garlic bread that would have sufficed.

Anna helped herself to some salad. “Did you find her somewhere suitable? I guess it must be a security challenge, having her here. Chastel’s _daughter_.” She shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe it, that the man couldn’t possibly have reproduced. She had no doubt heard all the stories Charles had to tell. Perhaps she had imagined he had eaten them all. Leah took a large gulp of wine, fighting the hysterical urge to laugh.

“Somewhat. Though he’s dead, some of those now vying for Chastel’s role in Europe see mating with the daughter of Chastel tantamount to inheriting. She travelled on a false passport, under a different name. We’ll change her name again, erase what trace of her there has been so far.” At this, Bran glanced at Charles, who nodded. This was his responsibility. “As to where we place her – I have a few thoughts. I’ll speak to the Alphas directly.”

Charles proffered a couple of names, then, and there was a discussion of their suitability, mostly just affirming Bran’s existing thoughts. Leah knew the suggested Alphas herself, of course. She had no qualms about them. With the exception of Anna’s old pack, most of the packs in North America were more stable.

An idea popped into her head. If Aline was placed with one of them, perhaps Leah could speak to her from time to time.

 _No_ , she thought, putting a halt to that. She had to continue as it had been before. They hadn’t exchanged a single word since Leah had left. No letters, no telegrams. Each time a new method of communication had arrived, Leah had thought, _perhaps now I could talk to her_. Perhaps there was a way to do so secretly. Find out her address. Her phone number. Email. Did she have a cell phone now? Maybe they could just text.

She had mentally composed so many messages to her sister. All them had begun with, _Are you alive?_

Well, now she knew. Aline was alive. She was alive and she was here and that was the best news. She could manage with that. It was more than she had ever had before.

The conversation continued without her for much of dinner, as it always did when it was Bran and his family. She smiled appropriately, frowned when needed, was thanked for the meal politely. Anna even asked for the recipe, which was a thing women did to reaffirm their compliments. Leah didn’t put much store by it; her daughter-in-law, if she could call her that, could be quite manipulative.

Still, Leah knew she would have Bran scan the recipe tomorrow using his office printer, email it to Anna with her adjustments or potential changes. Just in case it was real.

That night, Bran kissed her, stroked his hand down her face. “I had planned to let you know we would be having so-dramatic a guest in the house.”

“It’s fine,” she said, irritable because she had hoped that was the last of the discussion and she wasn’t thrilled to be talking about her sister whilst her husband had his hand on her breast. Irritable was good, she thought. If he felt anything through the tightly controlled mating bond, it was that.

He moved his attentions to her neck. “You have nothing to be jealous of,” he told her, his words sending shivers down her spine. 

Leah certainly hoped not. “Let’s not talk about it anymore,” she suggested, voice shaking with need.

She was a little fiercer with their lovemaking than she normally was. Bran was surprised – it was usually he who was fierce – but she knew he enjoyed it, she always made sure he enjoyed it. He probably thought she was stamping her claim on him, with her teeth, with her nails, by demanding that he go _faster_ , be _harder._ Not that she felt so guilty she wanted him to make her forget.

She woke in the middle of the night with it, sweat crawling at her temples. She kept thinking of the last time she had seen Aline, her hands pressed against the window of her bedroom, watching Leah leave. She hadn’t screamed, hadn’t broken the glass. She had just stood there and watched, dark eyes empty of emotion.

She kept thinking about that, over and over and over again.

Bran had gone to his room to sleep, to have his own restless dreams. The door was open and she walked through, quietly, knowing that he would wake anyway.

“Again?” he said, lifting his head to look at her. There were few other reasons she would walk into his bedroom in the nude.

She nodded and climbed over him, pressed their mouths together. He sighed into her, gripping her hair with one hand. One of their bargains. Neither of them would ever say ‘no’ to this. 

*

Little was mentioned of Aline for a few weeks, which was good because after the savageries of Sage’s betrayal and deaths of the most cherished of their wildlings, Leah wasn’t particularly in the mood for more disturbances.

She wanted things to go back to normal, _thank you very much_.

Or as normal as they got around here.

Bran sent Charles and Anna off on one of their little mysteries – from the conversation she overheard, it sounded like it was more reward than anything else, though reward for what, Leah didn’t know. Good behavior?

Leah herself didn’t often get rewarded. Perhaps because she wasn’t very good, she thought, smiling to herself as she cleaned the downstairs guest bath.

She had a sudden, visceral memory of being punished by her father and had to stop scrubbing the shower, gagging on the smell of bleach when terror made her suck in too big a breath.

Afterwards, finding herself sitting against the tiled wall of the bath, panting, she was shocked at herself. Where had that come from?

Well, obviously, she knew the answer to that. With Aline came memories of him, long repressed ones. It was bad enough when Bran or Charles casually mentioned him in conversation, apparently it was worse when her sister had come back into her life, however briefly, real as anything. Her own flesh and blood.

She was glad that Bran put her fear of dominant male werewolves like him and Charles and Asil down to her ‘Nineteenth Century notions’. The true fear he had felt from her at the sound of Chastel’s name he could always have attributed to that. Not that most werewolf females didn’t feel the same way, she thought wryly. Not like Peggy hadn’t feared her homophobic alpha. Not like Anna hadn’t feared all the men in her pack. Fear was the only acceptable response when most dominant werewolf males could still kill them without a thought. Female werewolves like Leah were rare, and they were – in some senses – prized, but they were also expected to toe the line. Werewolf society was a patriarchy. And autocratic, at best. Despotic at worst. No one had taught her that better than Chastel.

Leah remembered when Bran had been planning the big meeting in Seattle with the European packs. The weeks of anticipation, knowing that Bran was going and _he_ would be there, on American soil. The relief of Bran giving in to Charles’s request, of Charles and Anna going instead and her being one more step removed from Chastel. _Charles_ might have been having premonitions that something was going to go wrong but that had been nothing, nothing, to the skin-crawling thoughts that Leah had. It had been the only time she had previously considered telling Bran everything.

But of course, then Madden had Jean Chastel killed. And she had been finally free of him, though it was certainly too late to tell Bran after that. She regretted it now. If Leah had told him all those years before, she wouldn’t be in this position. It would have been old news.

Leah finished the bathroom, having vigorously removed all trace of the mud and other bodily fluids, scrubbing as if she could clean up her own guilt. The night before had been full moon and quite a few of the pack had decided they wanted to run with their alpha. Some, the younger ones like Kara, preferred to Change in the bathroom – nothing to do with modesty, more to do with the concentration required of the transformation, and the vulnerability.

She dumped the dirty water into the toilet and happened to glance at herself in the mirror.

Aline had been born to a different mother so they didn’t share physical similarities. She was dark, whereas Leah was fair. Petite where Leah was tall. Leah’s mother, a nameless, faceless teenager she didn’t remember, had been from further north in Europe. Aline’s mother had been French. As a young woman, and a young werewolf, Leah’s fair beauty had been much commented on – a point of pride for her. Or it had been. Years of her husband’s utter disinterest in physical beauty had taken its toll on her in that respect. Bran only cared about the beauty inside and Leah had always thought her father had whittled away any potential for that. 

Aline, however. Aline had always been good.

Perhaps it was just Leah who was at fault there. Something in her own nature. She lowered her eyes and gave the faucet one final polish. Then she was done.

*

Leah discovered where Aline had been placed some weeks after the fact. She was in one of the Colorado packs, just a short plane journey away. Her name had been changed to Eileen. Eileen Castle.

Bran didn’t seem very pleased, however, which gave Leah pause. He had found her in the backyard, trying to work out what was wrong with the sprinklers. Sometimes the squirrels chewed through the hose and it was a matter of checking all the obvious points. She wasn’t having much luck today, though.

“Was it difficult, then? Getting her out of France?” she asked, trying to understand what was going on in Bran’s mind. Sometimes if she asked directly, he would be cryptic. Sometimes the exact opposite. She thought it had to do with when he was still thinking something through and didn’t have the answer yet. 

“A surprising number of Chastel’s wolves were disinclined to let her go.”

“Hmm. I presume you had a lot to do with it, then?”

“A little,” Bran said, which essentially meant he had. He held out a large cookie to her from the plate he was holding, which was good timing because she was just thinking she was a little hungry. She brushed off a glove and took it. Ate it. He gave her another cookie. “Michel helped.”

Leah had never met Michel, who had only been Alpha of one of the French packs for the last century. She had known his predecessor, one of her father’s acolytes, affectionately called ‘the Butcher’ – she had, in fact, been ‘destined’ for him. Affianced. A date had even been set for their wedding. She was to be a reward for his loyalty, to be broken in however he wished. She had been very glad to hear that Michel had later torn his throat out and assumed command of his pack.

Bran liked Michel, maybe even trusted him, she thought. She had heard from Charles, and Anna, that he was not particularly dominant, but Bran seemed to think that Michel allowed people to think that, just as he allowed it. “His great _-_ _grand-mère_ was one of the Valais witches,” Bran had said once, as if this explained his rationale. “He and his very ambitious wife are merely biding their time.”

Michel had certainly shown a softer side for women, risking his life to warn Charles that Anna would be Chastel’s next target. Leah shuddered. Irritated she might be by Anna, she would not have wanted that man anywhere near her. 

She munched the second cookie, finishing it in three bites. “What do you know about her relationship with Chastel? Before he met his well-deserved end?”

“Kept her under his thumb, by all accounts, but I assume by surviving to her age she was able to manage him, though part of that was doing his very unpleasant bidding. Strangely, I don’t think his perversions included her but that’s an indelicate thing to ask so I didn’t.”

Leah was lucky she was crouched on the ground, brushing soil and leaves from sprinkler hose, because he couldn’t see her face.

No, his perversions had never stretched to his daughters, they had been saved from that even when they had been human. He had too high an opinion of his own blood. He had, however, liked making them _watch_. Relished their terror. Tortured them in other ways. He thought that it would make them stronger.

 _In the past_ , she told herself, firmly.

“There,” Bran said suddenly, pointing.

She looked to the right, saw the obvious evidence of squirrel devastation. “Dammit,” she muttered. She really was going to have to put the hose underground. The sprinkler system was large and the patching was _never ending_.

Leah sat back on her haunches and Bran put a consoling hand on her head. Then his finger trailed down her scalp, around her ear. She shivered and looked up at him, not unduly surprised to see the slow-blinking look of desire on his face. “Really?” she said.

“It’s the gardening clothes,” he explained with a cool smile. She was wearing old jeans with holes and a T-shirt that had been his but was torn at the neck and hem. “You look faintly disreputable.”

“What, like you’ve picked me up off the streets?” she asked drily, standing up and pulling off her gloves. She could hardly talk. She had a particular thing for when he was wet. Couldn’t explain it. He could come in from an unexpected rainstorm and she would be plastered to him in seconds.

“I’m a deeply disturbed man, what can I say.” Now _that_ was a truth Bran felt deeply and she knew he meant it to cover more than just this.

Bran slid a warm hand up her T-shirt, pulling her towards him for a kiss, the kind of kiss that said if she didn’t put effort into it, they would be having sex in their back yard in the middle of the day. She didn’t care so much about the public nature of it – in that any of their wolves could walk up and see them – she cared because she knew it would be _quicker_. She liked him to take his time.

Leah took his hand and pulled him back into the house.

*

She had been lucky with Juste. He was much older than her and she had really only been under her father’s ‘care’ for a few decades before she had escaped. That was a blink in time for a wolf like Juste and just as she didn’t remember him, he didn’t remember her. If he had ever seen or met her at all.

And she liked Juste, too. He was quiet but he was strong. She felt safe with him, which was a rare, strange thing for her to think of a dominant male werewolf. There was just something about him, something that put her at ease. Maybe it was simply his old-fashioned courtesy, his rigorous belief in the pack hierarchy. She never felt she had to defend her position with him; she was the Marrok’s mate and he needed no further proof of her strength.

Juste, like Charles, often spent time with Bran. They talked about the wolves of Europe. Her mate’s mental map of all the wolves in the world was always being updated and spending time with Juste helped with that, helped with the spider-web of relationships that tied them all together. A spider-web that, unknown to him, she was a part of.

Sometimes, if Bran had to take a phone call or, increasingly, one of those video calls that meant he could look his wolves in the eye, Juste would come out and find her, ask if she needed assistance with any of the chores she was inevitably doing.

“What is it?” Juste asked, tilting his head to the side.

She was in the garage. For a long time, the garage had become a dumping ground for anything except for cars and it was getting out of hand. They couldn’t even squeeze one car in the space now, let alone the three they actually had. It was, as had often been pointed out to her by Hauptman’s security company, a security risk. Having a car in the main garage – instead of under the awning like they usually were, or parked in the drive - could mean a quick escape. She wasn’t sure this one shelving unit was going to allow them to do that but it was certainly a start.

“It’s a shelving unit. I’m going to put all that,” she nodded to the boxes, baskets, and general detritus that was cluttering the space, “on it. Once I’ve built it.”

Juste nodded. His eyes scanned the quantity of poles and planks, the little baggies of screws. He picked up the instructions by her knees and looked at them. “Better with two sets of hands,” he said.

Her mouth firmed at the implication she couldn’t do it on her own. “I can manage.”

Juste politely ignored her and got down to help, managing to somehow not do this in a way that she found patronizing. It _was_ better with two and, by the time Bran had finished with whatever it was that he was doing, they had the shelving unit up and against the wall.

Leah was thrilled. She loved when her organizational plans came together.

When Bran came into the garage, he chuckled knowingly at her face. “You’ve just helped make Leah very happy,” he said to Juste.

“It was my pleasure,” Juste said, bowing slightly. They had just about weaned him off saying ‘sire’ every time he spoke to Bran. Leah kind of missed it.

“Will you stay for dinner?” she asked. It was rare that she suggested it, not when the alternative was just her and Bran, which she ultimately preferred.

Juste recognized this was an exceptional situation. He bowed again, a little lower. “Thank you.”

Leah smiled warmly at him as Bran exhaled disapprovingly. “Good. It’ll be ready for seven. Now, go back to whatever it is you’re doing,” she said, dismissing them. She looked at the piles of disordered _stuff_ with anticipation and cracked her knuckles. “I need to focus.” exhaled

Bran snorted. “Her Highness has spoken,” he commented drily.

She was nearly done by the time she needed to start dinner and was in a satisfying-enough place that she could easily pick it up again tomorrow. 

Whilst she was reheating the main meal, Leah dug out her label-maker, stored in the pantry where she was more frequently labelling things. She was fitting a new tape when Juste and Bran came into the kitchen, Bran sniffing. “Chili con carne,” he said in anticipatory tones, lifting the lid.

Sometimes when Bran was away, Leah put on loud, modern music he would dislike and cooked big batches of meals and froze them. It meant that on evenings like this, all she needed to do is defrost and reheat and prepare accompaniments. She had spent her whole marriage becoming the kind of Alpha’s wife who was ready for every domestic eventuality, who would never let him down on that front. That and killing was all she’d ever been good for. She had, in fact, probably become everything her father had wanted her to be. 

A lowering thought.

She allowed her husband one taste – “Spicy!” – then she shooed him away to set the table.

Unsurprisingly, the conversation at the table seemed to continue the one they had been having in his office and inevitably turned to their newest migration. She sighed internally.

Juste knew about Aline. Not _of_ her, thank goodness. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and nodded. “I knew there were children. Hidden somewhere.”

“More than one?” Bran said this as if he thought it was expected, she noted. Not like he was asking.

Juste shrugged. “He was an old wolf.”

Leah made herself wonder if Juste had children, living or dead. It wasn’t a question that a woman could ask of werewolf men. Ask a werewolf female if she’d had children prior to her Change, that was fine – most would elaborate with sad fondness. Men were different. She wondered why that was. Bran, for instance, never spoke of the children he’d had before Charles and after Sam. For there must have been some. Hundreds of years without effective birth control and she knew he hadn’t been a monk. His libido matched hers. Outpaced it, even.

She imagined there were descendants of his, dotted about Europe. A strange thought.

A few minutes of round-about conversation occurred. Then Bran wove his way back to the topic of Chastel’s children again, which told Leah that this was the only thing he was interested in. The man was like a dog with a bone. “You said, hidden?”

“By their mothers, I understand.”

Leah’s mother had hidden her. So had Aline’s. He always found them. Leah had been taken to Gévaudan to be raised, only a few months after he had found Aline, so they had effectively been raised together. The boys were always killed or so she had been told.

Hoping it would change the subject, she pushed the pot of chili towards Juste, who had finished his first portion and all but licked the plate. “Please, help yourself to seconds.”

He did so and Bran passed the rice and salsa. “You are a wonderful cook, Leah,” Juste said, putting a hefty blob of salsa to the side of his rice and adding some cilantro from the bowl Leah had kept separate. Bran loathed the herb, the one thing he was unrepentantly picky about. “Do you enjoy it?”

Leah smiled easily. “I do, actually.”

“She takes courses,” Bran added, helping himself to seconds as well.

That was rather a simplification but perhaps Bran didn’t know that. Leah had actually gone to culinary school for her associate degree in the 1990s – which had been an intense program and involved a heavy workload, difficult to balance with her ‘other job’ of being his mate. Before that she had attended many local classes, having been inspired by Julia Child in the 1960s.

These days, most of her cooking boiled down to big-batch meals with lots of flavor, which meant that Leah felt like she was in something of a rut. She wanted a change.

“I’m actually looking into some Asian cooking classes, at the moment,” she said, taking a sip of her iced tea.

“And I’m greatly anticipating the outputs of that,” Bran said, not lying. She had mentioned it to him before and he had spent the following few days periodically shouting out dishes to ask if they were included in her course load. “My favorite was when you did that pastry one. Pie for weeks.”

Leah grinned. “I remember. It was years before I could face a pastry again.”

“ _Croissants_ ,” Bran said rapturously. 

“Very time consuming,” she added, narrowing her eyes at him so he didn’t get any ideas.

Her husband was trying hard to be especially charming, no doubt for their guest’s benefit. His eyes positively twinkled. “Maybe for my birthday.”

Leah rolled her eyes to Juste. “To be clear, Bran doesn’t have a birthday, at least not a real one. But once a year he announces he suddenly remembers _exactly_ what day it is and it’s usually the next day or the following weekend and we’re all supposed to jump to organizing things for him.”

Bran chuckled, amused at his own actions, and pulled the basket of cornbread towards himself. “Memory is such a tricky thing.”

Juste was smiling broadly, looking between them. Leah knew, when they put their minds to it, they could present the very best view of their marriage to the casual observer. Their close family – his family – knew better, of course.

“Is there dessert?” Bran asked, knowing there would be.

Leah nodded, getting up to clear the plates.

*

Juste had stayed for coffee and _digestifs_ , which meant that Bran combed through his souvenir drinks cabinet and told entertaining stories about each bizarre bottle he had picked up on his travels that proceeded to gather dust, since neither of them really drank spirits. He’d been particularly relaxed and funny, as he sometimes was, and she knew from experience how this would translate when they were alone together. Bran went from laughingly intent to just intent, pinning her to the couch after Juste had gone, licking the taste of cognac from her mouth.

When she coaxed him upstairs, he undressed her slowly, kissing each inch of skin revealed, then spreading her thighs and putting his mouth on her until she was nothing but a helpless, weak mess.

“Let’s shower,” Bran suggested, jumping off the bed suddenly.

Panting, she stared at him. “What? But you haven’t—” She looked at his erection, which he was casually running the tip of his finger up and down, circling the head, and promptly lost her train of thought.

“Yes. Let’s _shower_ ,” Bran repeated. He pulled her up.

Her bathroom was the biggest, with a tub, but he had the best shower, an extravagant walk-in feature set in front of a large window. Bran backed her into it, hands on her ass, mischievous smile on his face that matched his apparent age so well, and turned on the water. She yelped because it came on cold, which was not sexy. He laughed silently, picked her up by her thighs and pressed her against the cold tiles, out of the direct line of the spray.

Bran was quickly wet through, hair plastered against his head, thick eyelashes clumping together, water dripping from his lips. She felt a rush of lust and love and sipped at the water on the dip of his upper lip. He manhandled her a little more until he had her where he wanted her and pushed inside her achingly slowly.

Her eyes rolled towards the back of her head, rippling with renewed pleasure around him.

“See. Good idea,” he said, kissing the corner of her mouth, withdrawing equally slowly. “You like me wet.”

“Oh, you know – _ah_ – know about that,” she said, faintly.

“Yes, because you’re so _subtle_ ,” he said, with a sudden, hard thrust that made her gasp.

*****

The guilt that she felt grew as each day that passed. She started dreaming about Chastel and all the other tormentors of her childhood – well, not dreams. Nightmares of things that she had long since buried.

If Bran knew about her particularly restless nights, he didn’t say anything. Very few older werewolves slept peacefully and they slept apart, more often than not, for that very reason.

“I know you’ll hate me for saying this, but you look tired, Leah,” Anna said, her face prettily concerned.

Leah didn’t hate Anna. She was an Omega, so how could you hate something so fundamentally good? She could be annoyed by her. Frustrated. Piqued. “I don’t hate you. I’m fine,” Leah said, exhaling with irritation.

“Well, good, I guess, on both counts,” Anna said, picking up the dish from the counter and carrying it outside.

Leah rolled her eyes. What was it about the younger generations that all they wanted to do was _talk?_ Was this how Anna had changed Charles? By talking to him? She imagined _asking_ Bran to talk about his _feelings_ and felt a little shudder pass through her. She knew everything she needed to about Bran’s feelings and it was nothing she was going to like. She certainly couldn’t change them – God knew how she had tried.

She sighed, not in the mood to go outside and ‘play’ with the pack. She _was_ tired and she was unhappy.

She needed to tell Bran.

She _knew_ this.

She just didn’t know how.

It didn’t help her that he was being very affectionate, for him. Considerate, perhaps. That they were making love two, three times a day. That he was talking to her, leaving his office door open so she could overhear the conversations he was having. That he was taking _extra care_ with her, the absolute bastard.

She _loved_ him – had loved him for such a torturously long time – and right now it felt like her marriage was in the best state it had ever been in. And even if it was temporary even if, God forbid, he was only doing this to make up for accusing her of being a traitor only a few months before, she didn’t want it to end.

And when she told him… it would end. She knew that.

*

Finally, propelled by the latest stomach-turning half-memory, half-nightmare, Leah finally found her confidence in the dark. She walked into his bedroom and shook her head when he pre-emptively started to pull back the comforter so she could get in.

She clenched her fists. “No, I have to talk to you about something.”

Sighing, Bran turned on the light. “This feels like a conversation that requires pants,” he said.

He sat up and pulled on a pair of pajama pants and she went back to her room, opened one of the drawers by the side of her bed and found a nightdress. It wasn’t a serious conversation nightdress, more of a seduction nightdress, but since neither of them wore clothes to bed, she had limited options.

Bran came into her room, inscrutably watched her put this article on, and do up the delicate little buttons that went down her sternum. His sandy hair was in disarray and she wanted to touch it, to push the strands back into their usual order, to curl herself around him and beg that he not hate her.

“You’re going to be very angry with me,” Leah said, tucking her hair behind her ears instead. “And I know that I will deserve it. And I’m sorry, I truly am.”

Bran drew in a deep, somehow resigned breath. “Excellent.” He turned the chair in front of her dressing table around and sat on it. “Go on.”

Leah perched on the edge of her bed, unconsciously mirroring Aline’s posture from weeks before. She stared at Bran’s feet, knowing there was absolutely no way she could look him in the eye for this, see that look of betrayal. “I told you once that my father was a monster. That he Changed me.” She swallowed. “That I never wanted to speak of him again.”

Bran’s feet didn’t move. 

“You did,” he said slowly. “I took that request very literally. Your life prior to me was private. As is mine before you.”

“Which I appreciated.” From one perspective, her own selfish needs, this wasn’t a lie. In the beginning, that had been true, it had been an exchange that had benefited her. What she had learnt of Bran’s history had only been through hearsay – there were many, many people who had stories to tell about Bran. But, sometimes, when he volunteered information that was pertinent to the moment, she found herself drinking it down like her mouth was dry with wanting. The bargain they had struck had become unbalanced, in her mind, his secrets a well she wanted to drink dry and hers nothing more than a note on a page.

So thinking, she swallowed. “This isn’t an excuse as much as it was an explanation. I never dreamed it would become the issue it became. I thought it was something that could stay in my past. That he, my father, could stay in my past.”

She could feel a prickling awareness at the edge of their much-controlled mating bond - his surprise. Leah had surprised him, a thing she rarely did. She guessed had an inkling of who she was talking about. “I see.”

“The woman in Colorado… Aline. She’s.” Leah swallowed again, anticipating his anger. “My sister. We grew up together, in as much as we were allowed to.”

“In France.” His tone was almost wistful.

She nodded and wiped her palms on her thighs. “In Gévaudan. There was a _château_ we were brought to when he found us. Where we were kept. There were ones before us, and probably after us, I suppose, but Aline and I grew up alone together.”

Bran’s feet moved suddenly, in that he stood up, and she flinched back, expecting the worst. “One moment,” was all he said, leaving the room.

Flushed with sudden adrenaline, she heard him run downstairs. She had a horrible thought that perhaps he was calling Charles to bear witness to her confession. She covered her face with her hands. That would be humiliating.

She heard doors being opened and closed, however. Was he in his office? The kitchen? Yes, the kitchen. She heard cupboards. He was looking for something.

Leah dismissed the idea that he was perhaps getting a knife, one of the many knives she had hidden about the place, but if Bran wanted to hurt her, he didn’t need a weapon to do it. So was he, of all things, getting a _snack_?

Bran’s steps announced his return as he travelled up the stairs. When he came back into the bedroom, he was carrying a pack of Twizzlers and was already eating one.

“What the—?” Leah asked, truly mystified. Bran did have a sweet tooth – they had an entire drawer of candy for that reason – but this inexplicable urge to arm himself with sugar in the middle of such a conversation astounded her.

Bran grimaced. “I needed something to chew on.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You mean, _like a dog?_ ”

“It was that or this chair leg.”

He sat back down and she stared at him, watching him chew almost frantically. She couldn’t feel anger through the mating bond, nor through the pack bonds. There was nothing, in fact. He was as tightly controlled as ever. Even the surprise had evaporated.

“May I have one?” she asked, after thinking about it for a moment.

Bran affably offered the packet to her and she leaned forward to pull a strand. She put one end in her mouth. They both ate silently for a moment, teeth tearing through the rubbery, ‘cherry-flavored’ texture.

“This is not what I was expecting from you,” Leah said after a while.

“Nor I. I thought you were going to tell me you were leaving me,” he replied, tossing the packet onto her dressing table with an exhale that sounded close to relief. “I have been braced for that.”

Leah paused, shocked, then resumed chewing. “I see. How long have you been thinking that, then?”

“Few weeks,” he said casually. “I could feel you were keeping something from me. This, I imagine. But to my mind it seemed more likely to be that you had changed your mind about forgiving me for what I thought you were doing.”

The affection. The open-door policy. The sex. It all made sense. She closed her eyes to mask her hurt. She had known it wasn’t natural, in her bones. His own, manipulative way to try and keep her with him by giving her what she had always wanted.

“I’m not sure there is anything you could do that would make me leave you now, Bran,” she told him, honestly but not without regret. Her heart ached.

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

Leah put the Twizzler back in her mouth and tore off another piece. He was right; the chewing was oddly satisfying, released some tension. “Your wolf wouldn’t let you do the one thing that would make me,” she said, confident in that at least. Physically, she knew that was true. Emotionally… that was another matter. But she managed. Had managed. 

Bran’s hazel eyes flared. “Then if that’s the case, why on _earth_ —” He made an annoyed noise, rubbed his eyebrow. “No. That’s not what we’re talking about. Tell me the rest.”

She turned her eyes back to the floor again. “There’s not much more that you can’t guess. Aline is my sister. Chastel was my father, if only in the biological sense. A few years after I was Changed, I escaped, made my way to the New World to get as far away from him as possible.”

Bran chewed silently. She risked a glance at him. He appeared to be contemplating her right knee but looked up to catch her gaze. “Did you purposefully seek me out?” he asked, coolly.

“Seek you out?” Leah pulled back slightly, surprised. “No, I didn’t.” If anything, she had been led to believe Bran had sought her out. Or someone like her. The opposite of his first, true mate, she thought, bitterly. Picked from a line-up.

“When we mated, one of our bargains was that I would protect you without question.”

He had always been surprised by that – as if the possibility that he wouldn’t protect his mate, regardless of how he felt about her, was ridiculous. But it had been the ‘without question’ caveat that Leah had been interested in. On a smaller scale, she had used it, in the pack, to ensure that no one could disrespect her and it was something that Bran enforced without her needing to justify it. 

“Well. Yes. Not specifically _from_ him. I didn’t think he would ever find me.” She pulled a face. “I suppose _obliquely_ I was thinking of him. Or others like him.” She pieced together her thoughts, trying to trace her way through what he was asking. “Do you mean – did I know about you? From him?”

He nodded.

She shook her head. “Oh, no, I’d never heard of you until you walked into camp and introduced yourself. I could tell you were capable of protecting me, if it came down to it,” Leah explained. When she had met Bran, she had recognized his power and she had been attracted to him; it had been as simple as that. His strength was part of the appeal, no question about it. And perhaps she had always had a thing for hazel eyes. “But you weren’t the Marrok then. At least, not in the way you are now.”

Her mate was scrutinizing her, looking for the lie. She was annoyed that he anticipated one, that he thought she would lie about something that was a fundamental tenant of their relationship. Leah felt her glare became heated but she looked down at the floor again. She couldn’t lose her temper, not now.

“Fine,” he accepted. “Tell me about Aline.”

This conversation really wasn’t going the way she had pictured it. For one, she expected there would be _significantly_ more shouting. She had been expecting him to rake her over the coals for this. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d walked out on her.

But, as always, Bran never did quite what she anticipated. She supposed she could thank his belief that she had been about to leave him for that. Comparatively speaking, perhaps this was easier to deal with. “What—what do you want to know about her?”

Bran shrugged. “Her age. Her history. Her personality. Everything you can tell me. The situation in Europe is becoming an interesting one. Old wolves creeping out of the woodwork, looking to stake their claim, but they lack the knowledge that Chastel had. For all his sins,” Bran inclined his head, as if to acknowledge this was an underestimation, “he managed a complex Region, keeping Libor in check, as well as the hordes in Russia. His daughter – the one we knew of – is seen by some as an important chess piece.”

Leah grimaced, recalling what he had said at dinner the other night. “Do they really thinking marrying her, mating with her, is going to help them succeed?”

“I can appreciate it’s old fashioned.” He was rueful. “I can hide her, here, from them, if that is what she says she wants.”

There was something in his tone… “Why do you sound like you don’t believe that’s why she’s here?”

“Because I don’t. I have my suspicions that Aline was more than just her father’s puppet. And that she’s here for revenge.”

She started shaking her head and couldn’t stop. The woman who had instinctively reached out to embrace her was not that description. “No, no, that can’t be true. Aline was the good one. Always. And revenge for what? For Chastel’s _death? We_ had nothing to do with Chastel’s death. That was all Madden.”

“Most of Europe doesn’t believe that. Most of North America doesn’t believe it. They think it was an orchestrated plot by me, executed by Charles.”

Leah rolled her eyes. “Oh, for goodness sakes.”

Bran’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Quite. Now, tell me about your sister.”

Leah exhaled. Of course. Now he just wanted useful information for the present situation. She had to put aside this asinine idea that her sister had been so warped by Jean Chastel as to want to avenge his death and give him _background_. “She was already there, when I was brought to the _château._ She was about my age. We barely understood each other, in the beginning. She spoke Occitan which is—” She waved a hand around. “Well, it was impossible for me to understand because I grew up in northern France but given we’d both just violently lost our mothers, we at least had each other to cry on. You don’t need a shared language to do that.”

Bran’s eyes skittered to the side, as if he had just spotted prey. He calmly got out another Twizzler. “How old were you?”

“I was ten, I think, or eleven? She was a little older, but not so much. We shared a bedroom.” Happily, the time immediately before that was a blurred memory. If her mother had died in front of her, Leah didn’t remember how. She didn’t remember being loved by her. She just remembered mourning her, remembered crying with Aline in their shared bed. “Until we were teenagers. Then they separated us.” Leah’s lip curled. They had been less safe, then.

Her husband stood abruptly once again and once again she flinched backwards. “I need a moment.” He went into his room and closed the door. She heard another door close – the bathroom – and the shower turn on.

“Extraordinary,” she said out loud, going to get another Twizzler from the packet.

*

Bran came back with still-wet hair, which Leah of course found distracting and couldn’t help but wonder if he had done it on purpose. He had put a T-shirt on with his pajama pants and it was damp around his pectorals and over the muscles of his abdomen. He pointed to the bed. “Get in,” he said. Yet another surprise.

“This is not how I ever imagined this was going to go,” Leah told him, trying to get an understanding of his emotional state. She had completely thrown him and in turn he was throwing her. 

“Hmm,” her husband replied.

She climbed into her side of the bed, watched him climb into his as he had done countless times before. He turned out the light and she turned out hers. They lay side by side, staring at the ceiling. A full five minutes passed before Leah cracked.

“Do you want me to tell you anything else? About Aline? Or…” She left the sentence unfinished. Perhaps – unfathomably – he just wanted to go to sleep.

“I have too many questions,” Bran said after a while. He tapped his fingers on his chest, then held up the index one. “We will get to that later. But let’s focus on the present for now. Have you spoken with your sister since?”

“Not since I left France.”

“Which was?”

“1811.”

He nodded minutely. “And you have had absolutely no contact at all since?”

“None,” Leah said softly, rolling onto her side so she could look at him, try to see any expressions that might pass over his profile. “I wanted to. But I didn’t know how to get word to her without him knowing. And I didn’t want him to know where I was.” And then, she admitted, he had died and suddenly Leah realized she didn’t know how to find Aline without alerting Bran.

“You told me you were Changed in 1795. That’s was the truth.”

“Yes.”

“And Aline?”

She nodded. “We were Changed within a few hours of each other. She was first,” Leah added. Chastel had them hold her down, made her watch, so she knew what she had to face. But Bran didn’t need to know that. She had watched many Changes since then, all equally as violent. There was nothing special about the way he had Changed them. Just that he had enjoyed doing it, of course. One of the abiding differences between Chastel and Bran. Bran took no pleasure in the process of Changing; it was a necessity.

“And what was she like?”

Leah tapped her hand on the mattress as she thought about it, as she often had. “She was the good one.”

“What does that mean?”

“She behaved. She did her lessons. Treated the servants well. Didn’t try to escape. Didn’t talk back.”

“So would you say she tried to please him?”

Leah frowned at the implication. His eyes were bright in the dark. “If you wanted to live, you had to,” she whispered. He would know that; he knew Chastel. “But he wasn’t there that often. The main pack wasn’t based in Gévaudan. There were others, his lieutenants, who minded us. We had to please them or they would report us to him.” Truth be told, she didn’t want to think about the things they had to do to ‘please’ the werewolves who had watched over them.

Bran absorbed this without comment and didn’t ask for more detail. “You said she was the good one. You were not? I’m trying to understand the comparison.”

“I made mistakes,” Leah said, shortly. She swallowed and admitted, “She was cleverer than me.” That would be important for him.

“And you were punished for them.”

After a hesitation, she shook her head.

“With what I knew of him, I find that surprising,” Bran said.

“No. That was— I _was_ punished, but not in the way you’re thinking. Not, not always. After a while, they realized the only way to truly hurt me was if, instead of punishing me, they punished Aline. Every time I did anything he – or they – didn’t like.”

Bran made a noise. Almost approving, in a way, like he could see the logic. “I see.”

Guilt and shame suffused her. She twisted the comforter in her hands, her face burning. “It was why I had to leave. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. You know I’m not… not clever, like that. I’m not subtle. I say what I’m thinking. It was—I never learnt. I tried. I tried _so hard_. When they beat her so badly she stopped breathing, I knew I had to escape. _I_ was going to kill her, before he did.”

Her husband was silent. If she expected sympathy, she wasn’t going to get it. Aline was the one who had deserved sympathy and Leah had left her behind. At her heart, Leah had always been selfish.

“Now here is a question I think I already know the answer to,” Bran said, thoughtfully. “I should think most werewolves know the name of my mate, even if you have never met them. You are known by word and by deed. And I wouldn’t say that your name is particularly common.”

She saw where he was going. “This name, my name, wasn’t the name I was born with.”

“As I suspected,” he said easily. “What were you called, if you don’t mind me asking this personal question?”

Leah pursed her lips. “I don’t mind. It was Léonie. I don’t remember what my surname was.”

Bran nodded. Then he rolled onto his side, then, his back to her. The conversation, it seemed, was done.

*

Bran’s hand on her shoulder woke her up and she sucked in a surprised breath. He was leaning over her. “I’m going to Colorado.”

Her eyes roved to the curtains and saw that it wasn’t light outside. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s six in the morning.”

“Okay,” she said, rubbing an eye and trying to wake up. She wasn’t an early riser, particularly in the winter when everything in her body told her she should be snuggled up in bed until the weather became more amenable. She had no idea what time she had eventually gone to sleep last night, lying awake long after Bran’s breathing had changed to that of deep sleep. Her brain was lagging. “But it’s still dark. Why? Can’t you go later?”

Despite his otherwise tense mien, Bran smiled, not one of his impersonal ones, but the one that said she had accidentally done something he found charming. He quickly stifled it and she remembered that he might not be angry with her but he probably didn’t like her very much. “Needs must.”

He was gone before she could connect his words with what they really meant. It wasn’t until after Leah had stumbled into the shower and was facing a bracing cascade of water when she realized he’d said _Colorado_. She was so _stupid_.

She was still shaking off soap when she found her cell, when she got through to him. He was still driving. “Did you say Colorado?”

“Yes.”

“Is it her?” she asked, her voice rising up towards the end. She coaxed it back down. “Has she done something?”

Bran was silent. She could hear the tires on the road in the background. “No, but now I think rather than wait for this to unfold, I need to spend more time with her, bring her desires to the fore. Her Alpha called me yesterday expressing some concerns, in any case.”

“What kind of concerns? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Her mate exhaled. “There have been a couple of incidents. She was seen using a cell phone despite not supposedly having one – nor is she supposed to have one – and then she denied it. His Second thought she had used his computer without permission. Again. Given her situation, we asked her to restrict her communications with anyone back in Europe. With the additional information that you so kindly gave me last night, this warrants my attention and I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know you were a _blood relation_.”

Leah chewed her bottom lip. The anger in his voice, anger he had held back, was deserved. “Surely, if it’s revenge she’s after, going there—”

“I’m confident I could kill her first, Leah,” he said baldly. “Besides, if that had been her plan, she would have attempted it when we were alone in the house.”

She wiped a trickle of water from her neck. “Yes, of course.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“Actually, I’m glad you called,” Bran said, continuing as if nothing had been said, “I’ve spoken to Charles and amongst all this excitement, I entirely forgot that he and Anna are visiting her family this week. I’ve told him not to cut his trip short. So you will be on your own.”

She blinked. On her own with the pack. Usually, Bran made sure that Charles was ‘in charge’ when he was away. Whilst she might share Bran’s hierarchy, it became a technicality when he was absent – she was not dominant enough for the Aspen Creek pack. Charles was his Second and Charles was terrifying enough to bring everyone into line when she couldn’t. Even if she didn’t like that fact.

“I can manage,” she said, though he hadn’t asked. 

“I’ll let Asil know.”

She rolled her eyes. She knew he increasingly considered Asil stable enough to be a Third. A Third with a murderous hair-trigger, perhaps, and an absolute hatred for her. “Must you.”

“I must. After our _discussion_ ,” he said, testily, “it is for your safety. I should think if she is here for revenge, the sudden appearance of the sister who escaped, the sister at whose hands she suffered, would be an emotional trigger few could ignore. If you have any problems, Leah, you need to go to him.”

Over her dead body, she thought. “What about Juste?” she suggested, aware she sounded like she was whining.

Bran could read her like a book. “You will go to Asil. Leah, give me your word.”

Leah’s lip curled. “I give you my word.”

He hung up.

*

Each day Bran – and Charles – were gone, Leah woke on tenterhooks. Was this the day Bran would call to say that Aline was a traitor? That he had killed her?

Or was it the day something completely unrelated went atrociously wrong and Leah would have to crawl to Asil to ask for his help?

If she was honest, and she knew this reflected poorly on her, both thoughts made her feel equally sick.

Bran didn’t call but Charles did – every night, on the dot of six. She warred between finding it offensively patronizing or oddly considerate. She wondered if Anna had put him up to it or this was just Charles being a good Second. She didn’t know what Bran had told him but she didn’t think he yet knew the truth about her father. But then Charles was a still water that ran deep.

Kara came over each evening for dinner, which she often did, more so when Bran was away. Like all the pack, Kara loved Bran devotedly but she was one of the few who actually _liked_ Leah. She talked to Leah more than she did anyone else, perhaps more than Asil, particularly when it came to more traditionally ‘werewolf female’ topics. Leah often wished it had been the same with Anna, who only got her information from the heavily edited, often rose-tinted versions Charles and Bran gave her. 

They sparred in the back yard for a couple of hours, Leah criticizing Kara’s technique until she was happy with the improvements, and then they spent an enjoyable evening going through social media and dissecting the girls at school that Kara hated. Being bitter and twisted, this was something Leah excelled at. It seemed to make Kara happy, which was the point.

She then dropped Kara home, seconds before her curfew, and got back in time to catch the last ring of the house phone.

“There you are,” her husband said. “I was worried.”

“Were you?” Leah asked, hope rising. Worried meant care, in her book.

He dashed that quickly. “No, not really.”

She sat back on the couch she had only recently vacated. “Oh. Is everything all right? What’s going on?”

“Too soon to tell.”

“But you’ve been gone for _days_ ,” she reminded him.

“What? Did you think I’d turn up, demand to know if she was here to kill me in loving memory of her father, get the answer and leave?”

When he put it like that… “Yes,” she admitted.

Bran laughed, a proper one, like she’d surprised it out of him. It was the best of his laughs, the one she was proudest of causing, and that he had allowed it happen meant things maybe weren’t as bad as she was worried they were. A fragile happiness bubbled inside of her.

“Where are you that you’re having this conversation with me? Not staying with them?” She listened, could detect nothing but the rustling of trees.

“I’m about five miles away from the house. I drove out so I could call. Tell me what’s been happening.”

Leah was happy to report that nothing had been happening. She talked a little about Kara, tentatively, as it was a gentle topic and she wasn’t sure if he would be interested in just _talking_ to her about normal things. He made the right kind of noises. Another good sign. She cleared her throat. “How much longer do you think you’ll be gone?”

“Not sure. Apart from the obvious curveball from you, I just plan to spend as much time with her as possible and see if she cracks. So we will have to wait and see.”

She thought of her sister, standing in her living room. Thought of the shock in her eyes. And, unbidden, thought of the last time she had seen her, pressed against the window upstairs as Leah had climbed the wall of the _chateau_ where he had kept them, whilst the commotion she had caused at the other end of the house served as a distraction.

“She’s nothing like you, though, that I can say.”

A flare of jealousy shot through her – which was insane – as she automatically assumed this was a criticism of herself. She cringed. That she could be so superficial at a time like this was shameful. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Yes, that was always true.”

If their roles had been reversed, all those years ago, he would never have married Aline, Leah thought. Aline had been too _good_. She dropped her head back on the couch cushions. It wasn’t really a consolation.

*

The next day, Leah scented a stranger on their property. A strange wolf, no less.

She had been taking out the trash, a chore that was normally Bran’s. She stood stock still for a moment, using all her senses – listening to the sounds around her, analyzing the scents. The acrid sweetness of the rot at the bottom of the trash cans. The late winter-quiet of the trees. And the smell of the wolf who had brushed past the edge of their garage, fur catching on the raised stone.

With prickling awareness, Leah went back inside, closed the door behind her. She wanted to Change, to investigate but she had made Bran a promise.

Pulling a face, she went to call Asil from Bran’s office, needing the reassurance of a more commanding space. Even in his absence, just being in Bran’s office made her feel stronger – it _felt_ like him. She had hated Charles using it for that reason. Like he was trying to usurp Bran and, by extension, her.

“Mrs. Cornick, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Asil said down the phone, conveying easily his extreme _lack_ of pleasure.

“I scented a strange wolf by the house,” she said bluntly.

Asil became all-business. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right over.” He hung up.

A short while later, Asil turned up in his wolf form and she showed him where she had scented the wolf. He followed the trail for a few paces and then stopped to look at her. Jerked his head towards the house.

“Oh, fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. She went back into the house to wait like a good little woman. 

In the fifteen minutes Asil was gone, she considered calling Bran but since she would have nothing to tell and would only worry him, she rejected it. Besides, he would only ask if she’d put a collar on Asil – during daylight hours, Bran insisted – and there wasn’t a chance she was going to have suggested that to the Moor.

She paced a bit. Dusted the mantle in a lackluster fashion. Ate a piece of cheese.

When Asil finally returned, he scratched at the door and she let him in. He headed straight to the guest bath and commenced his Change.

Compelled by long ingrained hostess manners, she went to make him a snack. Begrudgingly. And was sat on the couch, sandwich and energy drink on the coffee table, when he emerged wearing one of the pairs of sweat pants that she kept in the bathroom closet for this purpose.

Asil was a handsome man. Some might say beautiful. Leah had an appreciation for handsome men and had, at a very difficult time in her life, expressed this appreciation for Asil and had been terrified in return. Worse, he’d made her feel like an adulteress, like she had shamed her husband. She had never forgotten it, never forgiven him, not that he had asked for forgiveness. Uncomfortable, she kept her eyes averted whilst he pulled on a T-shirt. She tried to look bored.

Knowing he unnerved her, and that she was impatient to know more, Asil deliberately took the time to eat the sandwich, sip the drink she had left for him. She clenched her teeth, refusing to be baited.

Finally, he sat back with a sigh. “Our friend did a circuit of the property. Then headed four miles east to the main road where he Changed. Then I presume he was picked up by a car. Scent was strong enough that I imagine he also arrived by the same route.”

She nodded, picturing the road in question. It would be the most direct route to their house. “How old do you think it was? I thought as fresh as yesterday?”

He nodded. “Certainly no older than two days. Maybe he knew the Marrok wasn’t going to be here.”

That wasn’t a pleasant thought. Leah’s mind wasn’t set up for all the ‘what ifs’ of this moment. What if Aline was plotting her revenge. What if this was part of it, someone looking for their weaknesses. What if it was Leah, not Bran, this wolf was interested in. _What if, what if, what if._

Asil’s stomach rumbled and Leah took his plate, went to the kitchen to make him another sandwich. He followed her, this time, which she didn’t like – the kitchen, though large, was smaller than the living area, had fewer means to escape. She couldn’t help but think of that. Stories of the Moor _had_ been told to her as a child. She awkwardly found herself making his snack with her body half angled towards him.

After a moment, Asil put himself behind the kitchen island, as far from her as he could. She relaxed a small amount.

“You should tell the Marrok. And I suggest I stay here until he returns.”

Leah flinched. “It’s not necessary.”

“A strange wolf was scoping the house. We know that for certain. We know he’s collaborating with someone.”

“It could be something perfectly innocent. A lone wolf. Or someone looking for Bran’s help.”

“Then why didn’t they knock on the door?”

Leah put the sandwich in front of him. “I don’t want you here.” Not when she was alone.

“The Marrok left you in my care.”

“He did not _leave me_ in your care,” she spat. “I am not a child.”

“You are to me,” Asil said with that infuriating calmness that all old wolves had, taking a bite of the sandwich. His eyes met hers, bored into her until she dropped her gaze. “I will call him myself if you do not. You will see I am right.”

She growled and left the kitchen, went to get the phone in the living room. She called her husband and he answered on the second ring. Leah nearly spoke before she remembered where he was and had to reign in her temper. “Are you alone?” she asked, unable to keep her annoyance from her voice.

Asil came out of the kitchen, leaned against the wall, watching her with his arms crossed.

“Give me a moment,” Bran said calmly. She heard a door open and close, heard his steps along something that creaked – a porch, she thought. He was outside. A car unlocked. He climbed inside and closed the door behind him and turned on the engine. “Speak.”

“A strange wolf has been on our property. He did a circuit of the house. Asil followed his trail to the road and thinks a car picked him up.”

Bran adjusted the volume on the radio, turning it up. “How old is the trail?”

“No older than two days. Maybe yesterday.” She ran her hand through her hair. She hadn’t left the house much the day before – only for her run in the morning and then when Kara came over. Her eyes widened in alarm. _Kara._ She looked at Asil then and her expression made him walk towards her. “Kara,” she said, urgently. Of everyone in the pack, Kara was more of her personal concern. “Kara was here yesterday. We sparred, in the back yard. What if—”

Bran cut through. “Is Asil there?”

“Yes,” she said. A shimmer of Asil’s wolf crossing his eyes and she trembled.

“ _You_ stay on the phone with me. Give Asil your cell phone. He can call the school. Check she’s there.”

That was right. Asil was on the ‘approved adult’ list at Kara’s school as well. She pulled her phone out of her bag and handed it to him, watched him scroll through the unfamiliar set-up and make the phone call. He was visibly relieved to hear that Kara was in attendance, as was she.

Bran’s voice was very calm. “Good girl,” he said to her quietly.

She sat on the edge of the couch, knees weak. Asil finished up his phone call and took the other couch. “We should pick her up from school today,” he said. Normally Kara got the bus and ran the last couple of miles to Aspen Creek. She needed to exert more energy than a normal teenager or she became frenetic.

“That’s a good idea,” Bran said. He made a small, thoughtful noise. “Obviously there are a variety of possibilities for why a strange wolf would be assessing our property. I don’t like the timing, however.”

“Too big a coincidence,” Asil grunted. “Enough time for you to be arrive in Colorado and for someone to be told that you are away and be mobilized. We could ask Tag, Juste, a few others to have look around Aspen Creek. See if there is a trail to be found elsewhere. See who else he’s been looking at or if his focus was just on this house.”

Leah let them continue talking to each other, fear boiling up inside of her. What if, Leah thought. _Kara_. The pack. What if she had somehow endangered the pack by drawing Aline’s attention? She had sworn never to do that. This pack was Bran’s life’s work and therefore it was hers.

“I’m sorry, Bran,” she whispered, miserably. Asil looked askance at her, not understanding her tone.

Her husband exhaled. “This may have nothing to do with you. But tell Asil in any case. I will call before you go to bed.”

That was encouraging. “Okay.” She hung up the phone and stared at it.

“Tell me what?” Asil asked.

He didn’t like her anyway so it would make no difference. “Chastel was my father,” she said.

Asil sat back and silently absorbed this information with barely a flicker of his eyes. She waited. 

“I would not have wished that monster on anyone,” he said, after a while.

“No,” Leah agreed easily. “Aline, whom Bran is monitoring in Colorado, is my sister. I left France not long after I was Changed. The first time I saw, or spoke, to Aline was when I found her in this house.”

“The Marrok didn’t know?”

She shook her head. “When we met, it seemed irrelevant. And we don’t talk about our pasts. And then he died so I thought it wasn’t important any more.”

Asil’s head tilted towards the French doors that looked out onto their back yard. “From what Bran told me, he believes she may be here for revenge. He doesn’t know what form that will take – if it’s killing the Marrok or gathering information for whatever old wolf she plans to throw her support behind in Europe. There are a few I know of who would take great pleasure in rattling Bran’s cage.”

That was, of course, more than Bran had told her. The fact that she was serving as a spy was a new angle. Perhaps there was an equally awful puppet master in Europe, pulling on Aline’s strings.

“I understand now why Bran impressed on me my need to stay close to you,” Asil mused. “I thought it unusually over-protective. You have always demonstrated an ability to take care of yourself.”

This unexpected compliment discomfited her and she looked for a way to find it offensive and couldn’t immediately find it. “I would like to ask Juste and Tag to scout around Aspen Creek. As you suggested,” Leah acknowledged. It was a good idea. “If this strange wolf has been elsewhere, we should know about it.”

Asil agreed. “I will call them.”

Leah drew herself upright. “And I will be keeping my personal information to myself for the time being.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Naturally. No one will hear it from me. Is it just Bran and myself that know?”

“Unless Bran has told Charles. And therefore Anna,” she added, for that was the way of their marriage.

“Charles should know. And you should be the one to tell him.”

*

Charles rang on the dot of six as he always did and Leah was waiting in Bran’s office. In the kitchen, Kara was being teased by Asil and Tag as they all prepared dinner.

Her erstwhile son-in-law reacted with silence. In the background, Anna, who had been milling around in what was presumably their hotel room, stopped making noise. She wondered if they were talking to each other mind to mind. 

Anna said, gently, “Are you all right, Leah?”

“Yes.” She paused, pressed her lips together and then said, “Thank you for asking.”

Wisely, Anna chose not to make any response to this.

“The working theory is that this wolf was one of Chastel’s, or Aline’s, I suppose,” Charles surmised, eventually. Like his father, he moved on to the most pressing matter.

“Yes. There are obviously plenty of other things it could be – it could be completely unrelated - but that’s the worst case scenario.”

For the first time, Leah saw that there _was_ a best case scenario in this. That Aline was innocent. She had come to America to start a new life. She was safe and now everyone knew about her. Leah could see her again. She could have _family_. 

She regretted thinking this, immediately. Hope was a killer. She pushed it aside. 

“What did Da say?” Charles asked, helpfully distracting her. 

“He was mostly only interested in my perception of Aline,” she said. She remembered his comment from the previous night and her thoughts darkened responsively. A helpless, jealous cascade of _perhaps he was interested in her because he was attracted_. After all, Bran had only been more engaged with Leah because he thought she was planning to leave him.

Unbidden, the image of him turning his back on her in bed crossed her mind. Had he already switched himself off once more?

She put the phone down so she could rub her face. Why did she do this to herself? 

Charles didn’t have much else to say. She knew he would probably call Bran next anyway and get his insights directly. Bran would tell him more, he always did.

She took a moment to compose herself, then followed the sounds of the members of the pack in her kitchen. Juste and Tag had confirmed there was no scent of the wolf in the rest of Aspen Creek which was both bad and good. Bad because it meant his focus had been on the house. Good because the rest of the pack might not be at risk.

“Pizza. Great,” she said, when she saw the counter was covered in several liberally topped disks of dough. Kara was laying anchovies over one, to the general complaining of Tag, who did not agree with fish on pizza. With relish, the young woman then sprinkled some cooked shrimp and Tag pretended to gag.

Asil and Juste watched this with varying degrees of amusement. Leah decided the occasion called for wine, which everyone except for Juste and Kara declined. Kara seemed surprised when Leah poured her a glass.

“I think the rule for underage drinking applies only if it can get you drunk,” Leah said mildly, as if she even cared what the human laws really were. “Besides, it’s an acquired taste. You might hate it.”

Kara did not hate it and by the end of the meal, had tried out a variety of different wines from their wine cellar and Tag and Asil had both joined in this impromptu wine tasting. Tag considered most wines to be disgusting – with the exception of the dessert wine – whereas Juste was highly complimentary about Bran’s taste.

“Actually, Bran has no interest in wine,” Leah corrected, not-so-gently. It wasn’t the first time someone assumed the ‘man of the house’ made all their choices. “I selected all of these.”

Kara spluttered with laughter. Juste apologized profusely, turning red. “Assumptions make an ass out of you and I,” Juste muttered, giving Leah a rueful look. “Of course. You are a lady of exceptional taste.”

Leah toasted him with a glass. It was remarkable how liking someone made their minor slips perfectly palatable.

“How did you learn so much about wine, Leah?” Kara wanted to know.

“I did a wine pairing course in the 80s and kept up an interest. Oh, and Bran bought me a subscription to one of those wine companies for Christmas a few years ago.” He did have an annoying habit of giving thoughtful gifts.

“I prefer this to spirits,” Kara said thoughtfully, looking into her glass. “Though I wish I could get drunk, once. To see what it’s like.” The older werewolves at the table exchanged looks, which she noticed. “What was that look for?” She sat up straighter, delighted. “ _Can_ we get drunk?”

Tag started clearing plates, noisily. “Let’s see what we can rummage up for a dessert, hmm?”

“I’ll help,” Juste said, hurrying from the table.

“Leah,” Kara whined, sensing an opportunity. “Can we?”

She didn’t avoid the truth with Kara. “It’s a question of quantity, more than anything else.” She wrinkled her nose. “A few liters of pure alcohol will give you the effect you’re looking for but it wouldn’t last long.”

“Half an hour, maybe an hour, depending on your size and how much,” Asil added, leaning back in his chair so he was balancing on the back legs, grinning. “And then you’d probably vomit, _querida_.”

“A great deal,” Leah added. “It’s not something you can built a tolerance for either. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Have you?”

Leah tucked her tongue into her cheek and shared a conspiratorial smile with Tag, returning with cartons of ice cream and bowls. There had been one Thanksgiving, that followed a particularly dreadful October full moon ceremony, where the pack had imbibed heavily on bathtub gin. Tag’s bathtub, in fact. “Once or twice. Purely as an experiment.”

Kara’s eyes narrowed. “Sure. Once or twice.” Her face lightened. “Well, I’ve learnt another new thing, how about that.”

*

Bran called as she was getting ready for bed and she answered whilst she was brushing her hair.

“How did you know?” she blurted quickly, before he could say anything. She had been nervous of receiving his call. Afraid of what he would say.

“Know what?”

“Know that I was getting ready for bed.”

Her husband paused, quite likely because he hadn’t been expecting this conversational tangent. “You just feel like you’re getting ready for bed,” he said, slowly. “It’s experience.”

“Is this a mating bond thing or a you thing?”

“The former, I imagine.”

How annoying he didn’t allow her that facility in return. She thought she would find great comfort knowing that wherever Bran was he was getting ready for bed. “I suppose the same applies for when I wake up?”

“Yes, that too.” She could hear he was eating something crunchy – chips, mostly likely.

“Anything else?” Leah asked because when he was communicative like this, she knew she had to get in quick before he shut it down. 

“Sometimes I can tell when you’re hungry.” Bran sighed, ate another chip. “And sometimes when you’re tired. It comes and goes.”

Leah was suddenly distracted. “ _You_ sound tired.” And flat. Not the voice of a man who was courting her sister, she thought triumphantly, then hated herself for thinking it. She really was her own worst enemy.

“I am. Also hungry.” He lowered his voice, as if he was ashamed to admit it. “The food is awful.”

She laughed softly. Bran wasn’t terribly picky – she didn’t think any werewolf born before refrigeration was – so if he said the food was awful, he really meant _awful_. “I’m sorry. What’s so bad about it?”

“Well, they have a housekeeper because no one can cook and she under-seasons everything and the portions are very small and everything has _cilantro_.”

Leah laughed again but it was sympathetic. She knew well her husband’s loathing for cilantro. She dropped back on his bed and pulled one of his pillows over her to hug. “Oh, Bran, that’s tedious.” Bran would never complain about something so mundane. It would be beneath him, the infallible Marrok, to admit a dislike for an herb. 

“Everything tastes like soap,” he muttered, resentfully. “What did you have for dinner?”

“Kara made pizza. She put anchovies on one of them and Tag protested.”

Bran ate a chip. “I like anchovies.”

“It was a nice evening. Even Asil was pleasant and Juste likes my wine.” She closed her eyes. It really had been a nice evening, amongst all the awfulness. “Remember the Thanksgiving we all drank Tag’s gin?”

“In fact, very little, which I think was the point.”

Leah remembered - Bran had spent the evening and the night drinking straight from a bottle and staring out into the forest, monosyllabic. It had been an _awful_ full moon ceremony.

“Feels like a long time ago.” Must have been before Mercedes, Leah realized. Well before. She felt like a different person now. They felt like a different couple now. Hardened in some ways. Weaker in others. Parts of her felt very weak indeed.

“It does that.” Bran crunched another chip. “Shall we talk about the obvious topic now or are there any other conversational gambits you’d like to throw into the mix?”

“Of course.” He sounded like he was indoors. “Can you talk freely, though?”

“There’s no one here; they’ve gone for a run. I said I had some work to do.”

“You could sneak downstairs and make yourself a sandwich, then.”

Bran growled. “She _locks_ the pantry.”

Leah had to roll onto her stomach to muffle her laughter in the comforter. Down the hall, she imagined her guests could hear her.

“I’ll not forget your enjoyment of this, Leah Cornick,” her husband said gruffly. This just made her shake even more. She felt weak with it.

“I don’t envy that pack. A hungry Marrok is not a friendly one,” she said, attempting to keep the merriment from her voice.

“I don’t feel friendly, no.” He exhaled and changed the topic. “I’ve no news on your sister, despite forcing my company on her numerous times since we last spoke. If she harbors any deep-seated hatred for me, she hides it well. I think she’s entangled with Claude’s Second, however, which is quick work.”

“Hmm,” Leah said. This from the man who had seen Blue-Jay Woman and claimed it was love at first sight. She tried to call up Claude’s Second. Mauro. A stocky black man, a couple of inches shorter than herself. Dry sense of humor. Oddly, she couldn’t manifest any sense of relief at the idea that her sister might be romantically linked to someone else, other than her husband. How contrary of her. “I thought he was the one who accused her of using his computer.”

“He was.”

“What’s your evidence for this entanglement?”

“Body language,” he said shortly, as if he was annoyed that she thought he could misjudge such a thing. Between werewolves, it was normally very clear if there was an attraction. 

Leah thought about it. “I can’t imagine—” She stopped, pursed her lips.

“You can’t imagine what?”

She rolled into a seated position, still holding the pillow to her chest. “I wonder at her ability to form functioning relationships,” she said carefully. “You’re right - if she’s known this man for only a few weeks, it _is_ quick. It was not easy for me. Is not,” she amended, before he could.

However, Bran contested this. “ _We_ have a functioning relationship.”

“Within some very specific parameters,” she pointed out, delicately. Just from his silence, she could _hear_ Bran disagreed with her. Maybe from Bran’s point of view, it was functioning just as he wanted it to but even so they were two centuries in. It had not been like this in the first few years. It had been close to hateful. “What I mean is, every ‘relationship’ we had was with one of his lieutenants and it was always a _quid pro quo_ thing. I can’t see that changing, even after I left.”

Her husband absorbed this. He ate another chip. “That’s an interesting insight. What kind of ‘things’?”

She blew a breath out, trying to do what he always did and compartmentalize the past into what had been necessary to survive and not feel the emotion that came with it. “Oh, favors, negotiation over punishments, clothes, food, protection, sex. Good sex,” she amended. Because there had been plenty of bad. Plenty of _you-have-no-choice_ sex. Leah had at least bartered away her virginity so that her first time had been, if not pleasant, then not with a sadist.

In the background, Bran folded up the chip packet. “Assuming all those other things are taken care of, I suppose Mauro could protect her, if that’s what she’s looking for. Claude would be better, though, surely, as the Alpha?”

He would, logically. And from what she remembered, Claude was more dominant. “Remind me - when did he leave France?”

“Just before I put the first migration ban in place. Did you know him?”

She shook her head. “No. We only knew the lieutenants.”

“And who were they?”

Leah felt like this was a test. That he was trying to find out what she had known about Chastel’s regime, even if he already knew the answers. He didn’t need to test her. She would answer anything he asked. “They were the top ten of his people, hand selected from everywhere he held control. Most never lasted long. The few that did were ‘promoted’ to be Alphas of their own packs once they had demonstrated their devotion to duty.”

“Would I be familiar with any of them?”

“From my time, the only ones I know are still alive are in Andorra and Lourdes. Both are lone wolves, though.”

Her husband made a considering noise. “Yes, I know those two. Nasty pieces of work, the both of them. Not Michel, then.”

“No. I never knew Michel. I presumed he was in Bouchard’s pack.” Bran knew more, in that way he did. Bran knew who Michel’s great-grandmother had been. She supposed he kept a track of all the witch-born, watching them for any sign that they might one day turn out to be like him. “And, anyway, from what Juste says, Chastel didn’t have this structure anymore,” Leah added, a detail that Bran presumably knew.

“No, there were fewer wolves in Europe willing to demonstrate that blind devotion,” Bran said acerbically. “His immediate pack was just a collection of weak dominants who had no choice but to do what they are told and then his Alphas weren’t much better.”

“Aline isn’t weak.”

“No, she isn’t,” Bran said shortly.

Leah was silent. “What do you think of her?” 

“I think she shows a face to the world that is not her true one,” her husband replied. “And I think she is hiding her emotions well. I cannot fault her for what she learnt to do to survive him, if that is all this is. We are all molded by our experiences.”

For the first time, Leah reflected that perhaps yesterday her husband had not intended to be complimentary about Aline. Her fickle heart warmed. He had not fallen for her, then. Not that it would have been remotely possible, she assured herself. Blue-Jay Woman was a once-in-a-life love for Bran. It would never happen so quickly again. She _needed_ to remember that. “She—she was once kind.”

“I wonder if she was. I wonder if you had no one but each other and your standards were skewed. I have seen no evidence of kindness now. She obeys Claude but there is a sense of disassociation, almost as if she is tolerating him. She is not connecting with anyone in the pack, the possibility of a relationship with Mauro aside, and that could just be an itch they are both scratching. I’ll admit, I am struggling with her.”

Leah was conflicted. Bran read people better than she did but it was hard hearing this about a woman she had thought of all her life in terms of regret and sadness. They had hidden under their bed and giggled together, as girls. They had planned the loss of their virginity by grading the lieutenants on a sliding scale. They had survived the Change together. “Have you talked to her about me? Mentioned me at all?”

“I am planning to tomorrow. I’m taking her on a hike. I didn’t want to make her suspicious. Naturally, she might assume that you would have told me and for the time being I will pretend that you haven’t, that I am woefully ignorant still,” Bran said drily. “I will use this complication for my benefit.”

She accepted this chastisement at face value. Aline would surely have wondered if Leah would have been forced to reveal the truth, as she had been. “ _Is_ she suspicious, do you think?”

“Yes, but I think that is default. _That_ you have in common.” He made it sound as if ‘suspicious’ was a bad thing. She stuck her tongue out where he couldn’t see it.

“But, of course, why would either of you trust any man, hmm?” Bran said, suddenly. “Having lived lives of _quid pro quo_ , as you put it.”

“I trust _you_ ,” Leah said staunchly. Almost from the first moment of meeting him, in fact. Her wolf spirit had been the trigger, of course, but the human had followed quickly.

“Do you?” her husband said coolly. “You are relieved that I have not warmed to your sister.”

It was sometimes crucifying that he knew her so well. “I—”

“Tell me you haven’t been creating jealous fantasies in your head the entire time I’ve been gone?” Bran was angry, now. Or perhaps had just been hiding it before. The abrupt change in tone was startling.

“That’s not— I trust you not to—” Leah went cold with mortification but then even as her temperature dived she hit a well of long-banked fury and suddenly her body flushed scalding-hot. “Well, I tell you what Bran, I absolutely did trust you not to do that. I trusted you right up until the point you fell in love with that coyote and started courting her under my nose. So, no, _actually_ , I don’t trust you like that because _you_ have set the precedent, _not me_.”

“I did _no such thing_ ,” he hissed.

“ _Liar_ ,” she hissed back, and, God, it felt so good. “And if you’re not lying to me, you are certainly lying to yourself.”

She then had the absolute audacity to hang up the phone on him for a change.

*

Leah sat in the kitchen eating ice cream. This was a method of drowning one’s sorrows that Kara said was tried and tested.

She supposed it was quite nice. She poured more raspberry sauce into the carton directly, not caring that at some point someone else might want to eat it. 

Her husband had not called her back and she was beginning to regret her words. There were some things they didn’t speak of. Old wounds that were best left alone.

She was also perilously aware that she had been shouting towards the end and there was no question her guests – Asil and Juste - would have been able to hear her. She had always thought they should have put soundproofing in upstairs. When Charles and Anna stayed, she had moved in to Bran’s room so she couldn’t hear them through the wall.

So thinking, she heard Asil walk down the stairs and her first thought was a cowardly one – that she could run away, maybe hide herself in the pantry. Instead, because Leah was the Marrok’s wife and she _did not hide_ , she stayed put and mulishly continued to eat the ice cream.

Asil slunk into the kitchen – wearing just a pair of sweat pants – and went to the cupboard where she kept their coffees and teas. He proceeded to make himself a cup of chamomile and then slid onto one of the kitchen stools.

“Up until the point you started shouting, it sounded like a nice conversation,” he said, making no bones about listening. That was the problem with werewolves. Unless you made a concerted effort to keep conversations private, you had to assume everyone could hear your business. _Most_ werewolves were polite enough to pretend they didn’t.

So Leah said nothing.

Asil lapsed into silence, lulling Leah into the false hope that he would drop it. It allowed her to think, not about Bran, not about the coyote bitch who had the potential to ruin her marriage. But about Aline. Bran did not like Aline and Bran was a good judge of character.

Aline, she was coming to believe, was probably not good any more. Her father had broken her. She didn’t know what to do about this. It didn’t fit right in her head.

“Was that true? About Mercedes?”

Leah’s breath caught with embarrassment. “That’s none of your business,” she said shortly. Hers and Bran’s business, no anyone else’s. And the thought that someone would know that a mortal half-breed, not even a particularly attractive one, had caused her such pain was like a knife in the heart.

But Asil was looking at her now. Not with pity, she thought, but with banked anger. With something close to an epiphany, she saw he was prepared to believe her. Asil, who had always disliked her, always put Bran before her, even though she doubted he was under any illusions about him, either. 

He raised his eyebrows, expectantly.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the stories because everyone so enjoys telling them,” she said, giving in the desire to tell someone, someone who didn’t appear to want to take Bran’s side, or even Mercedes’s. She dropped the spoon into the carton, feeling faintly sick. “He and Sam were both mad for her. Sam was more overt about it, which is all the pack saw. But Bran started courting her in less obvious ways. Teasing her. Playing games. Pranks. They were constantly antagonizing each other. To be fair to Mercedes,” this she said through her teeth, “she had no idea what it was they were doing.”

“No, I suppose she wouldn’t,” Asil mused. His coal-dark eyes half drifted closed. “And she would have been young, yes?”

Leah nodded. “She had been forced to grow up quickly.” She had certainly helped in that sense. She had regrets about how she had treated Mercedes, she could be truthful to herself about that, too. “After Bryan killed himself, the poor bastard, she lived on her own and I think Bran forgot she was nothing more than a mortal teenager.”

Briskly, Leah put the lid back on the ice cream carton and put it back in the freezer. “Anyway. He sent her away, after Sam— well, I’m sure you’ve heard about that. Everyone thinks it was just because of Sam. But it wasn’t.”

“If it was the way you described, that is a shameful thing,” Asil told her gently, sipping his tea. “You have a right to be angry.”

“ _He_ does not think so. He denies it. But I know.” She slammed the refrigerator door and then rested her forehead against it. “I am sorry for what happened between us when you first arrived,” she said quickly. Flirting with him had been a moment of madness she regretted. “I was not in a good place.”

Asil grunted and inclined his head. “Let’s say that I see the context more fully now.”

“It was not—I do not, have never _done_ that sort of thing,” she said, flushing hot with embarrassment. A part of her, a significant part, hated explaining herself to him. “I wanted him to see what it felt like.” And Asil, she had thought, was a powerful, handsome werewolf, one who was not part of the history of Aspen Creek. Someone that Bran could be jealous of.

“Did it work?”

Leah pursed her lips. Bran had ignored it. He had even ignored that Asil should not have scared her the way he had done when she had so-disgusted him with her flirtation. So she had been doubly punished. “No, of course not. That sort of childish behavior would never work with him. I should have known that.”

Asil opened his mouth to say something else but instead they both froze as a muffled sound came from outside.

“Garage window,” she murmured, tilting her head to the side

He nodded and smoothly slid from the stool. “The door from there into the house is locked. I checked it.”

She had as well. “Yes, and the alarm will go off if it’s broken into.”

At which point, almost predictably, the power went out. It was echoingly quiet – the hum from appliances suddenly silent around them. Leah started to draw from the pack bonds, which she knew would wake Juste if he wasn’t awake already and alert Bran.

Asil pulled one of the largest kitchen knives from the block and made to pass it to her. She shook her head and reached under the breakfast bar to pull one of her preferred hunting knives from the hidden compartment. He gave her a wry smile.

“I can only assume there is more than one outside,” he said softly. “It would be suicide to send a single werewolf to the Marrok’s house.”

Leah nodded. “The only other point of vulnerability is Bran’s bathroom window.” She rolled her eyes. “ _He_ wanted to be able to look at the view whilst he showered. You can climb up there easily by scaling the roof of the office. I’ve done it.” To demonstrate what a terrible idea it was. They couldn’t even add any additional reinforcements because of the weight. But Bran had still insisted.

Almost on cue, they heard a noise upstairs. Someone carefully punching through glass.

“Juste will have to take care of that one,” Asil murmured. He then flinched, dramatically. At her startled look, he explained with a wince, “Your husband has just issued instructions and is being unusually loud about it.”

She bared her teeth. “How kind of him to involve me.”

“If it’s a consolation, they are _about_ you.”

Only then did her husband deign to get in touch himself. _Leah, you must not die._

She snorted. “Edifying,” she said, knowing Bran couldn’t hear her.

Leah gestured with her head and they crept from the kitchen, into the darkness of the living area, keeping close to the walls and moving slowly. The house was still. The heavy drapes had been pulled over the length of French windows out onto the back yard so no one could see in. The glass was bullet proof and the frames and the wall itself was steel reinforced. Adam, whose security company had designed the fortifications of their house, had said a car driven at speed wouldn’t be able to break it.

Leah slotted herself into one of the alcoves under the stairs and Asil melted into a shadowy corner between a bookcase and the end of the drapes. They listened, intently.

_Don’t take any unnecessary risks, Leah. If you are outnumbered, let Asil and Juste get you out of the house._

She tried to ignore him. She had never run away from a fair fight in her life. She could take care of herself.

As if sensing her unwillingness, Bran’s furious voice clarified. _I am ordering you to obey Asil, Leah. You will obey him_.

Leah’s jaw tensed with irritation. It was so frustrating having one-directional instructions delivered from upon high. _You’re not helping, Bran_ , she thought at him uselessly.

Upstairs, they heard the sounds of a struggle. Juste had found their first intruder.

To the left, down the hall, where the garage door met the main part of the house, one of the locks in the door crunched. There was also a second, electronic fail-secure lock that they activated at night. Without power, it wouldn’t open. They would need to force the door, which would be loud.

Breaking into a werewolf’s home was risky, even if they thought she was alone and somehow vulnerable to attack – a mistake males always seemed to make about females. To be successful, they would need to be quiet. She didn’t think breaking down the garage door was a logical action. Her eyes narrowed, suspicious. They needed to get upstairs, get a view of what was going on outside.

In the distance, there was a _whoosh_ sound, something like a noise an aircraft might make but on a much smaller scale. Instinct drove Leah and Asil to the ground and then with an earsplitting _boom_ , the house shook with an explosion of smoke and heat. Glass, brick and steel went flying as the entire wall of the living room blew inwards.

On the ground, Leah covered her head as debris rained down upon her and then Asil was yanking her up. His mouth was moving but she could hear no words, just the high-pitched ringing in her ears. He pulled her towards the stairs and they ran up.

Juste was in the hallway upstairs, clearly having dropped to the floor like they had. He was wearing underwear only and was smeared with blood. He spoke and she could hear him but as if he was underwater. “… rocket launcher… outside…”

Aware that the house was now potentially missing a supporting structure and not absolutely certain what that meant for its stability, Leah ran into her bedroom, pressed herself to the wall to peer out of the window, between the blinds. A dozen figures were moving around outside, in dark clothes, and another half dozen wolves on the ground, converging on the house. The two intruders had been a distraction.

She glanced at Asil and Juste. She had drawn as much as she could from the pack bonds. Her muscles felt pumped, adrenaline running high. But she was practical. “We are outnumbered,” she said bluntly. Maybe if Bran and Charles, the rest of the pack, had been there.

“Our orders are to get you away,” Asil said, looking relaxed. “We’ll use Bran’s so-convenient bathroom escape route.”

There was a backpack in Leah’s closet. She grabbed it and pushed her feet into a pair of slip-on sneakers. They stepped over the body on the floor of Bran’s bathroom and Asil pulled himself through the window, keeping low. Leah followed and they silently skirted over the low roof over Bran’s office. She could hear the sound of paws and feet running up the stairs inside the house.

“Run and do not stop,” Asil told her, eyes glinting in the dark. 

Leah nodded, dropped to the ground and ran.

*

As a pack, they had various emergency protocols. In the instance of an overwhelming incursion – which Bran had predicted would first be from the human authorities – the occupants of the house were to get to the gas station. There was a car, gassed and ready to go, the keys kept in an accessible location, as well as a cell phone, though Leah had a burner in her backpack, as well as a power-bank.

Of course, this was easier said than done. It was five miles from the house to the gas station and the three of them were immediately pursued. Normally, they would split up – separate their aggressors into smaller, more manageable numbers – but Asil and Juste had been ordered by their Alpha to protect her and they would die doing so. As the lead, Leah took a circuitous route, knowing these mountain backwoods like the back of her hand, fury making her legs pump faster, seamlessly scaling fallen trees and gullies. It was only a few months ago that she had chased, and lost, Sage and now she was being chased herself. _By their own kind._

Juste dropped back to thin out the numbers of their pursuers. She nearly stopped herself – unwilling to leave him - but Asil growled at her and she kept going. She jumped the back wall of the gas station with one leap and skidded to the lockbox where the keys were kept by the back door of the office. She punched the code, grabbed the keys and unlocked the car at a distance, Asil climbing into the driver’s side and shoving open the passenger door for her.

A sea of wolves flowed over the wall as she slammed the passenger door closed behind her and Asil reversed out of the gas station as full speed, spinning the car around and accelerating forward. Wolves hit them, solid as boulders, and Asil swerved, swearing. Her window smashed and she reached through to punch the eye of a wolf who had got his claws into the window frame and was clinging on, scrabbling up, jaw snapping. She hit him again and he fell back with a yelp, hit the tarmac.

The car picked up speed, a few wolves keeping up with them for the first mile, Leah crouched in her seat, ready to leap into the back to fight off any aggressors that made it through the rear window. But as soon as Asil hit over 40pmh, they struggled and dropped back.

Leah sat down in her seat. Since she’d pulled on the bonds, she was barely winded, but Asil was breathing heavily.

“Call your husband before he loses his mind,” Asil ordered.

It was an unnecessary instruction. She rummaged through the glove compartment. Peggy checked the phone weekly to make sure it was fully charged and there was already a message on it from Bran. _Call me_ , it said.

She rang and he picked up so quickly he must have been holding his phone. “Tell me,” he said sharply.

“Pretty sure they shot a rocket launcher at our house,” she told him, the very first thought she had. 

“Subtle,” Bran said. If he was relieved to hear her voice, he didn’t sound it. “Who is with you?”

“Asil. Juste… stayed behind. We should get Tag to find him.” She would have felt if he had been mortally hurt, would have felt that shimmering ripple of pain through the pack bonds. She worried, nonetheless.

There was a small pause, then, “I’ve told him, now. As far as I can tell, Juste is alive. Just busy.”

“Thank you.” His one directional mental communication did have some uses, she admitted. “Tell Tag no one should go near the house. There were more than twenty wolves. And he’ll need to do the phone tree thing,” she added, as an afterthought. She always forgot the humans.

Her husband growled. “A proper invasion of my territory, then.”

Leah glanced at Asil. Sometimes he had trouble with his wolf and violence. There were small flecks of blood over his arms and torso from flying glass. A muscle in his jaw was ticking but otherwise he looked all right. “Where do you want us to go?”

“Come here,” Bran said, surprising her. “If your sister is the problem, then let’s bring the whole thing to a head. It may even be useful having you here to talk to her. I’ll speak to Charles; he should return to Aspen Creek and deal with the damage.”

Then he hung up.

“Oh, I’m fine, thank you for asking,” she told the dial tone sarcastically. 

Asil snorted. “Trust me. He was worried.”

She frowned. “What did he tell you?”

“At great volume, to get you out of the house if we had to knock you out to do it,” the Moor said, eyes flicking to the rear-view mirror.

“Seems unnecessary,” Leah muttered, as if her husband had forgotten she was perfectly capable of making rational decisions. She rummaged in the backpack and pulled out a bottle of water, uncapped it and handed it to him. Asil took a long drink whilst she unwrapped the first protein bar. They swapped and he ate the bar in two bites. She drank. She could feel herself start to come down from the high of her flight or fight response. She would soon be ravenously hungry and Asil more so.

The car didn’t have GPS. As she unwrapped another couple of protein bars for them both, she outlined the main route to the Colorado pack, which was just north of Denver. It was at least half a day’s drive.

“We’ll need to stop to buy a change of clothes,” Asil asked. He glanced at her. “Though I’m concerned you might cause a riot if you leave the car.”

As she’d had guests in the house, Leah was wearing one of her rarely used nightdresses. Like all of them, it was short and left little to the imagination. For humans, it would be scandalous ‘outdoors-wear’ and also very inappropriate for the weather. Not to mention, utterly ridiculous looking with the sneakers.

“There should be sweats in the trunk,” she said. She had a sports bra and some underwear for herself in the backpack, some money, a credit card, one of her passports and Bran’s. She knew Bran had a near-identical kit in his closet. All the pack did.

“You are also bleeding,” Asil added as if her clothing had not been his main concern. “Head. I imagine you were clipped with something.”

Leah didn’t feel it yet. She pulled the small first aid kit from her bag and yanked down the sun visor. “Oh,” she said. There was a lot of blood, matting one side of her head and trickling down her neck. As soon as she clocked it, her head started throbbing. “ _Ow_.”

“Head wounds always bleed a lot.”

She prodded it, gingerly. “It’s superficial, I think.” Maybe a little glue would help – she had a small tube in the kit but it wasn’t something she wanted to wave about her whilst Asil was driving and her head obviously needed cleaning first. The phone on her lap started ringing. It was Bran again. “Hello,” she said.

“How badly are you hurt?” Ah. Of course, he would have felt her pain now.

“I think it’s superficial,” she repeated. “We were in the living room when the, ah, missile hit.” Words she had not been expecting to say out loud since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Her husband was silent. And then, “If this is her, _I will rip her head from her body_.” Then he hung up again.

“See, what did I tell you? _Worried_ ,” Asil said with satisfaction.

*

They stopped at a motel, paying for two nights to convince the receptionist to let such disreputable people stay in their frankly equally disreputable motel. After showering, dealing with Leah’s already-healing head wound, which mostly involved washing out the blood, she lay down in the twin bed without a single concern that she was sharing a room with Asil and fell asleep immediately. At seven, Asil woke her and they grabbed breakfast from a vending machine and she took her turn at the wheel while Asil cat-napped.

They swapped twice more before Leah finally pulled up in front of the Colorado pack’s lodge.

Bran was waiting for them. Leah’s heart turned over at the sight of him – relief and love, mixed with a feeling of safety that she usually only noticed when she was reunited with him. She climbed out of the car, walking briskly towards him, arms wrapped tightly about herself. He stepped down off the wrap-around deck and inspected Leah’s head first before kissing her hard on the mouth. Behind, in the house, she could see dark figures moving by the windows, watching them. One of them was probably Aline, she thought. She leaned into him, breathed in the earthy smell of him that told her she was home.

“Thank you,” Bran said to Asil.

“I did very little, I assure you,” the Moor said, as Leah once again bristled at the implication that she couldn’t help herself. 

Bran kissed Leah’s forehead, using this façade to say quietly, “Are you going to be able to lie to your sister’s face?”

She nodded. She rubbed her cheek against his and he did the same, briefly, before kissing her mouth once more, lingering a little before he pulled back. _Worried_ , she thought. She had been in danger before and his reaction had not been this extreme. Perhaps this was happening too soon after Sage.

“Good. Lunch is about to be served. Brace yourselves,” he muttered, taking her bag.

Leah privately thought her husband was exaggerating about the food but then she supposed the club sandwiches they had been served were reasonably basic, if on the smaller side for the werewolf metabolism. There _had_ been a lot of cilantro, which she didn’t mind, but her husband picked out fastidiously. There were eight of Claude’s pack at the lunch and Aline – or, Eileen – had sat down at the other end of the table, out of Leah’s sight. Though she was tensely aware of her presence, they didn’t exchange one word or look.

After lunch, Leah went into the kitchen and introduced herself to the housekeeper, who was suitably nervous about Leah’s presence in her domain. Whilst they exchanged polite domestic talk, an area in which she was actually capable, Leah took a look around the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of water. Glanced in the pantry, with its simple padlock. She saw the cilantro growing in the herb pots on the windowsill and smirked.

“Claude,” she said brightly, returning to the table. She slid into the seat next to her husband. “In return for your hospitality, I would love to cook the pack a meal tonight. And I won’t take no for an answer. You know how much I enjoy cooking.”

Claude, a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark blonde hair, blinked at her, then smiled. “How can I turn down such a request? That would be delightful. I’ll give Maud the night off.”

Asil gave Leah a peculiar glance, as if suspecting this was not her normal behavior, which it certainly wasn’t. As the Marrok’s mate, normally she would expect to be waited on.

Bran put a hand high up on her thigh and squeezed. “Perhaps you’d like a sleep after lunch,” he suggested amicably.

*

Clearly, Bran didn’t actually mean for her to sleep. Asil was shown to a guest room down the hall and Bran took her to the room he had been given – obviously one of the best rooms in the house. He closed the door behind them, before rapidly pulling off his T-shirt and telling her to undress.

“Isn’t this a little on the nose? There are a lot of people in this house,” she whispered, unzipping the hooded sweater.

Bran kicked off his jeans, shucked them against the wall and then impatiently tugged her sweats down. He slid his hands into her cotton panties, cupped her behind and sighed, leaning his head against her neck. “I don’t care,” he sighed.

If he didn’t care, then she certainly didn’t. She unclipped the sports bra and tossed it on the dresser, stepping out of her sweats. He backed her onto the bed, mouth on her neck.

Leah couldn’t in all honesty say it was the greatest sex she’d ever had with her husband. Record-breakingly _efficient_ , perhaps. Foreplay had been limited to Bran putting his mouth to her clit to get her ready and then used his thumb to bring her to orgasm whilst he pounded into her and came himself. She certainly needn’t have worried about them being noisy. There hadn’t been _time_ for that.

It was all a bit perfunctory, she thought, stroking his back. Nice. But perfunctory.

Bran cleared his throat and rolled off her. “Don’t say it. Give me a few minutes and I’ll—” He seemed to not know how to finish. He was embarrassed.

She found herself chuckling. Bran was rarely embarrassed, and certainly never had cause to be about sex. “You didn’t even kiss me,” she said, teasing him. 

Bran made an appalled noise and found her mouth, kissed her three times quickly, cupping the back of her head. “I’m sorry. Watching you eat at lunch was torture; this was all I could think about.”

Leah kissed him back. She liked the sound of that. “I like that,” she said, amused and delighted now. It could be perfunctory, she decided, if he had been desperate for her. “Maybe we could try for a repeat performance?”

He nodded, climbing back on top of her, licking into her mouth, sucking her tongue. “I plan to.”

“Slowly,” she added, wrapping her legs around his waist.

Bran laughed against her. “I shall endeavor to make you scream.”

He did deliver on that one and at the last minute she pulled one of the pillows over her face to muffle the sounds she was making, thinking there was loud and then there was _too loud._ He slid into her whilst she was still pulsing and she whimpered, oversensitive. Bran pulled the pillow off her. “I want to see you,” he complained. His face changed with an idea. “Actually.” He rolled them over so she was on top, sat up on his elbows to watch her eagerly.

Having just come her brains out, Leah took a moment to gather her strength. She began to move on top of him, holding his gaze. She wasn’t going to come again, but he _felt_ fantastic. “You _were_ worried,” she said.

“I booked two flights home, even knowing I wouldn’t be back in time or even able to get on a plane,” Bran said on a groan. He dropped back so he could hold onto her hips, bring them together more forcefully. His eyes were on her breasts, bouncing with their movement and his thumb caught her still-sensitive clit, gently circling it. “Did they say what I told them?”

“Just the part about dramatically knocking me out.” Leah started to move faster, enjoying the wet sounds of their joining and the creaking of the bed. To her surprise, she felt the familiar warmth of another climax rise up where he was still rubbing her, helped by the rhythm she had created. It hit her fast and she gasped, her rhythm faltering. Bran dug his fingers into her hips as she clenched down hard on him with her inner muscles and he moved her roughly on top of him himself.

“Better,” he said, baring his teeth. She nodded, then she leaned forward, resting her hands on his chest so she could draw him nearly all the way back out and then taking him in deeper. She could feel the muscles of her stomach working hard. She knew well what this sensation did to him and watched with pleasure as his mouth dropped open and his eyes glazed over. There was frankly nothing better than bringing her powerful husband down to this level, she thought.

“What else did you say to them?” she nudged, enjoying being the coherent one.

“Nothing… important. Damn, _Leah_.” Bran tensed and then she felt the first burst of his orgasm inside of her. She changed her rhythm again into something with shorter, more rolling movements, coaxing his pleasure from him. Her husband’s body curled towards her, his eyes on where they were joined as his hips thrust upwards. After half a minute, he dropped back onto the bed, though he was still holding her hard enough to bruise.

“Yes, this was better,” she told him, conversationally, stroking his smooth chest. She lifted herself up, parting them delicately.

Bran laughed silently, face slack with relief. He coaxed her down to him, held her. “Why are you making dinner? Not just to please me? Though it does,” he added, thoughtfully.

She hummed happily, cuddling him. “That reminds me, we need to go to a grocery store. Don’t let me fall asleep. And because I think Claude is short on funds.”

Bran’s hand, which had been stroking her hair, paused. “Why do you say that?”

“The small portion sizes. The economies. In the kitchen, the housekeeper was boiling the chicken carcasses for stock. The cilantro is fresh and there’s a vegetable garden outside, though it’s winter so no produce. That’s not necessarily unusual; just good housekeeping. But all the products in the pantry are discount brands and a few have ‘reduced’ tags on them. Most of the pack are wearing hand-me-downs, with patches from repeated mending, and all the light switches have labels underneath them saying ‘remember to turn me off’. The heat isn’t on, even though it’s a little too cool inside, even for us.” She rubbed her nose against his chest.

Her husband blew out a breath. “Clever girl,” he said.

“They’re not things you were here to observe,” she replied, though she was certainly pleased with herself and his approbation.

“I should speak to him, then.”

“ _After_ you take me to a grocery store.”

*

Like a child, she gave Bran a packet of cookies to eat whilst they walked around the store, Leah picking up everything she needed for the extravagant feast she planned, as well as some household staples. Her husband’s eyes constantly scanned around the aisles. He wasn’t on edge, precisely, but he wasn’t relaxed either.

“When was the last time we did this together?” Leah asked him, standing in the cleaning aisle and selecting a range of products. Cleaning supplies were always expensive, particularly when you had to buy the ones that didn’t offend werewolf noses.

“Grocery shopping? I don’t recall,” Bran said, reading the back of a bottle and handing it to her. “This one is environmentally friendly as well.”

She dropped it into the cart. “I love it,” she admitted. “Grocery shopping.”

“Certainly beats the old way. Oh, let’s get you some clothes,” he said, diverting to the central clothing aisles. He laughed at her lip curl of disgust. Clothes from a chain grocery store was not her idea of acceptable fashion. “Temporary measure, Your Highness.”

“Rather wear unwashed sweats,” she muttered, resentfully selecting a pair of black skinny jeans that would no doubt stain any surface they came into contact with and some plain white T-shirts.

Bran held up a pale blue knit sweater. It wasn’t awful, she thought, rubbing the material between her thumb and forefinger. At least a large percentage of it was made of natural fibers. “Okay,” she said, sniffing. It was actually quite pretty and would make her eyes pop. He smiled knowingly and then picked up a green one as well, dropping it into the cart. He also selected her some panties – synthetic lace, mint green, absolutely awful - which she rejected for some plain cotton ones. He was visibly disappointed. “This is not the place to buy that sort of thing,” she told him sternly, grabbing a plain sports bra as well, but filing away this unlikely preference of his for lingerie. 

“ _Fine_. We should get Asil some things, as well,” Bran said, heading towards the men’s area.

Leah was tempted to tease Asil with something awful but in the end just bought another set of sweats, navy this time which she knew he preferred, and some T-shirts and underwear. He was of a size with Bran, though not as tall, so it was reasonably easy.

They paid and loaded the bags into the car. They had used Bran’s rental, a decidedly nicer vehicle than the one that they had escaped Aspen Creek in. She put her seatbelt on and waited for Bran to start the engine. After a moment, when Bran didn’t move, she glanced at him. He was staring out of the window into the parking lot.

Nervously, she looked around. She hadn’t sensed anything and she had a hunter’s eye for detail. The parking lot wasn’t even very busy; it was the middle of a working day. “What is it?” she asked, scanning the cars one by one.

Bran engaged the door locks. “We need to talk about Mercedes,” he said, turning in his seat to look at her.

Leah’s shoulders hunched. She understood now why he had engaged the locks. She felt a very strange urge to _run_. Not that she couldn’t break out of this car if she wanted to, she thought, desperately. “No, we don’t,” she said, suddenly fearful of the outcome.

“I think we do. I think we have both allowed this to fester long enough.”

Leah wanted to deny that she had ‘allowed’ anything because _he_ had always controlled that narrative. But she pressed her lips together. She brushed an invisible piece of lint from the sweat pants she was wearing. “Fine. You know what I think.”

Bran nodded. He was calm. He had planned this, probably since the moment she had hung up the phone. Probably whilst they had been making love. “You are not wrong. But you are not right either.”

Prickles of distress ran up her back, behind her ears. Her blood rushed loudly through her body. “How so?”

“I was not in love with her.”

At the past tense, Leah turned her face away. She didn’t believe him. He dropped _everything_ for her.

“Look at me, Leah. Hear my words. This is not a lie. I was not in love with her. I am not _in love_ with her. I have never been in love with her.”

He was her Alpha and she had to obey him. Leah looked at him, even though she didn’t want to. Even though it was excruciating. And she saw in his eyes, in his voice, that it was true.

Leah had thought she had been relieved to escape France. She had thought she had been relieved when she had heard Chastel was dead. It was nothing, _nothing_ compared to the ecstasy of relief of knowing her husband wasn’t in love with another woman. That he harbored none of those romantic, passionate feelings for her, as he had done for his first, true mate.

“But you do love her,’ she said, just to clarify.

Bran inclined his head. “In the same way that I love Anna. No more.”

She turned her face to the window again. She wasn’t going to cry; that would be too demeaning. She concentrated on her breathing, slow and even. The relief hadn’t come with happiness. This revelation didn’t mean he loved Leah, after all, even a little. He was _allowed_ to love others. It was only her that he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. They were back to how they had always been.

Which was fine. Good. Better— wait. “What was I _right_ about?” she asked, spinning around.

Bran shifted. He was less calm now. Guilty. “I was courting her,” he said quietly. “At least, the very, very early stages of it.”

 _Not good_ , Leah screamed inside, as he confirmed something that a very, very small part of her had hoped wasn’t true. She grabbed hold of the handle of the door, clenched. _Notgoodnotgoodnotgood._

“I’m sorry for that. I didn’t plan it. I denied to myself that it had happened for a very long time,” Bran continued. She couldn’t look at him. She squeezed her eyes closed. “I apologize. You had and have every right to be angry about that. To be furious with me.”

Leah’s wolf, unlike her human, was a docile creature. She rarely involved herself with her human half without good reason. But now Leah knew without looking in the mirror that her eyes had turned to her wolf’s. She looked at Bran, showed him that the wolf had felt she needed to make her presence known. “What stopped you, Bran?” she and her wolf demanded. “What stopped you from taking it further? Just that she was a teenager? You could have just kept going, waited until she was sixteen. Fought Sam over her. What stopped you?”

“ _Everything_ stopped me, Leah,” Bran exclaimed, clenching his hands on the steering wheel so hard she heard the creak of plastic giving. “I didn’t want her like that. She was a _child_. A silly child under my protection. And _you_ are my mate. _You_ are my wife. It was— I am ashamed of my behavior, Leah. I am _sorry_. I am sorry I was too foolish to see what was happening.”

Tears rolled down her face and Leah covered her wolf eyes with her hands and cried. She cried _hard_. She felt him try to touch her and she slapped his hand away. “ _No_. Just let me be for a moment.”

Bran let her, though she could feel waves of restless unhappiness from him. He sat still and quiet in the car whilst she wrung out her tears. Courting, old fashioned as it sounded, was how a werewolf demonstrated intent. It said he was interested. It said he considered the woman a potential wife, a potential mate. A serious potential. For Bran to do that … it was close to making a public announcement of that intent. Whilst he had been married and mated to Leah. _Look, I have found someone better_ , it said. And he claimed he had done it accidentally.

And, oh, how it had _hurt her_. How it still did. She had never known such pain.

When she was done with her tears, she wiped her eyes on the sleeves of her sweater. “Fine,” she said, sniffing.

“Fine?” Bran repeated, disbelieving, hearing the lie.

“ _Fine_ ,” she said. She pulled the sun visor down and tried to fix the damage. She was not a pretty crier. She wiped her nose. “It’s like you said. I was right and I was wrong. I’m glad I was wrong about one thing, for I truly don’t think I could bear it. And I will continue to live with the other. It will just have to be fine.”

“That’s very practical of you,” he murmured.

“Yes, I’m very _practical_ ,” she said tartly. She slapped the visor up. “I can’t forgive you this one. You hurt me badly and let the pack think I was an irrational, jealous bitch about a mortal child when actually it was you that was behaving abominably. _Anyone_ in my position would have done the same, even your sainted Anna.”

“I know you’re right. I can do something about that.” Bran started the car. “When we get home.”

“Fine,” she said, and it was once again utterly disbelieving. What was he going to do? Admit to everyone what he had done? Bring up something that had happened nearly two decades previously? He would never. 

*

The silent journey back to the pack house was interrupted when Charles called to say that he had arrived home. Tag and Juste, who had been busy capturing single-handedly two of the wolves and containing them in the basement of their house, were in the process of shoring up the living room wall and clearing the rest of the damage. The guest bath downstairs was apparently a write-off as well. As he walked around the house, Leah could hear him crunching on debris.

“Do you want to interrogate our prisoners or are we waiting until you’re back?” Charles sounded furious.

“Why don’t you see if Anna can,” Bran suggested.

Leah’s eyebrows raised. Anna might be able to whammy them into submission more effectively than Charles’s more violent methods. “Do you recognize them?” she asked Charles.

“Not in their wolf form. I’ll have to see if I can force their change. But if they’re from Europe, I might not recognize them anyway.”

She glanced at her husband instinctively, forgetting for a moment that he hadn’t just made her cry in this same car not fifteen minutes before. She knew Bran would be able to recognize more wolves than Charles could. Bran shook his head and she heard his voice, very gentle, in her head: _We need to stay here._

She turned to look out of the window, rubbing her temple. Having him her raw head felt uncomfortable.

When they arrived at the lodge, Asil came out to help them unload the trunk and if he noticed something off, he didn’t mention it by word or deed. Then Bran went to speak to Claude.

Leah had most things packed away by the time one of Claude’s pack manifested in the kitchen to ask if she needed help. Audrey, a female, less dominant than Leah, kept her eyes no higher than Leah’s chin. Leah felt an irrational flutter of irritation. Irrational because if she had been more dominant, Leah would have also been annoyed with her. It was a no win situation.

“You can make some cookies,” she said, briskly. Then recalled that they had someone cooking for them. “ _Can_ you do that?”

Audrey nodded and reached for a recipe book on the shelf.

Leah used this as an opportunity to interrogate a member of the pack about her sister. She wasn’t subtle about it; she really was in no mood for that. After the usual bland responses, she went for the meat of the matter. “Is she sleeping with your Second?” she asked, smiling.

The woman fumbled the bag of chocolate drops, spilling some. “Ah. Um.”

Leah was aware that sometimes when she smiled it was less ‘friendly’ and more ‘shark’. She tried to tone it down. “It’s a simple question, Audrey.”

“I don’t think so. I mean. She’s only living with him, temporarily,” Audrey said hurriedly. “Because, um. The Marrok is—”

“Ah. The guest room is hers,” Leah said, putting two and two together. The only other guest room was the one Asil was staying in – and it was a small single room more suitable for a child than an adult werewolf. Presumably as ‘last in’, Aline had been first out when the Marrok had decided to visit. She wondered if that was the reason for the body language Bran had detected. Living together was intimate. “That makes sense. And where do you live? Not here, I don’t think?”

“With my husband. We have an apartment just along the way, by the gas station.”

“Your husband is Arthur, is that right?” At Audrey’s node, Leah continued. “What do you do for a living, Audrey?”

“I’m a librarian.”

Leah could not have been more astonished. Most werewolves had very active jobs. “You are the first werewolf librarian I’ve ever met,” she said, truthfully. It wouldn’t pay very well, either. Alpha’s took tithes from their people that were a percentage of their income; he wouldn’t get much from Audrey.

The woman was blushing. “I like to read.”

“I would love some recommendations. My husband also loves to read.” She managed to say this without any inflection whatsoever. “And I like to buy him books.”

“I can do that. What kind of things does he like to read normally?”

She took Audrey through her husband’s eclectic tastes – “Wow, he really does like to read” – and Bran walked in during this. Leah heart _thump-thumped_ painfully at the sight of him. He smiled at them both and then helped Audrey divide the cookie dough onto the trays she had set out. Audrey, despite no doubt knowing Bran’s reputation, relaxed perceptively. He could look and feel deeply paternal, if he needed to. 

Leah explained. “Audrey is a librarian. She is going to give me some recommendations for you,” she added, feeling a little like she was twisting a knife in him. _See. Look how I care for you_.

“I’m certainly going to try,” Audrey said, bolstered by the attention the Marrok was giving her.

Listening to her husband and Audrey chat lightly about books – he had annoyingly always been much better at small talk than she was – Leah prepped the evening meal. They had bought two of the largest beef cuts they could, which she was going to salt and roast simply on a bed of garlic and vegetables. She assessed the oven space and decided she would do the potato dishes first, then warm them up when the beef was resting. The rest she could do on the stovetop – piles of steamed greens, mashed potato, and the lentils for the salad with pancetta, garlic and shallots. She could do a mac and cheese, as well, and broil the top at the end. Maybe some creamed spinach. She was going for quantity rather than logic for this meal.

Audrey put the cookies in the oven on a timer and then excused herself, shyly. With noticeable deliberation, Bran came to lean over the counter next to her whilst she was thinly slicing potatoes. “I talked to Claude. We have agreed a loan with a favorable interest,” he murmured.

Leah took a moment to compose herself. She had said she was fine. So she would be fine. “Did he say how it happened?”

“A couple of bad investments. Water damage at one of his properties not covered by insurance, which I’m going to have Charles look at, and there were some layoffs at the oil and gas firm half his pack is employed in.”

Leah shook her head and started layering potatoes, onion, garlic and butter into two big Pyrex dishes. She had some stock set to one side to pour over. “Why did he take on Aline, then?” she whispered. Another pack member to support. And it wasn’t like Aline would be working and bringing in any income.

“I incentivized any pack who felt they could take on the security risk. Obviously that wasn’t enough to stymie the damage already done.”

“I wish they would just tell us,” she muttered. It was a refrain she’d often heard her husband say. She snorted. “Maybe we should do spot checks each year. Just randomly turn up and demand to be hosted, interrogate their refrigerators.”

Bran took a carrot out of the bag and bit into it, relaxing slightly. “Anna suggested the same thing. One pack a week, it would take us over two years.”

Of course, _Anna_ had already suggested it. “Unless we split up the work. You do it, me, Anna, Charles.”

Her husband’s straight nose wrinkled. “Feels a bit… nanny state.”

In principle, she agreed, but – “A hungry werewolf is a dangerous werewolf,” Leah repeated, as he often had. 

Bran stood as the timer for the cookies went and Audrey hurried back into the kitchen. “Half the pack have appeared. I think they could smell these from a mile away,” she said excitedly, carefully taking the trays out of the oven.

Leah pulled a gallon of milk out of the refrigerator. “Can’t have cookies without milk,” she said.

*

They had a full contingent of the pack at dinner, with an embarrassed but relieved Claude sitting at the head of the table. There was little to no conversation, just the sound of hungry people eating interspersed with polite requests to hand dishes down the table and frequent murmurs of ‘thank you, Mrs. Cornick’. Leah would have expected to have some leftovers but she had clearly misjudged that – every bowl, every plate was cleared, including her husband’s. 

She attempted, twice, to speak to Aline that evening but both times her sister neatly avoided her, first by swiftly offering to tidy up, which led to a stampede of grateful pack members who joined in to help. Next, in the living area whilst a few were deliberating over a music, she made a beeline for Aline, who dashed to the bathroom and then _climbed out of the window_ to join the impromptu game of basketball in the drive.

Giving up, Leah joined her husband, Asil and Claude, sitting on the porch steps with the bottles of beer they’d bought. She dropped down next to Bran, making herself do it because she was _fine_ now. “No one kills each other, I take it,” she said, nodding to the basketball game. If they tried something like that at home, there would be bloodshed. One year there had been a violent chess game that had crossed over into legend.

Claude shook his head. “No, we switch them around every ten minutes – no time to get competitive. But I, or Mauro, have to chaperone, just in case.”

“Where is Mauro?” Bran asked. He hadn’t been at dinner.

“Night shift.” Claude pulled at his beer. “At the moment, you pretty much take what work you can around here.”

Leah winced, feeling privileged. She leaned back on her elbows, watching the game. Her sister looked like she was having a good time. Her sister. Right there.

A lump suddenly rose in her throat and she fought it down. When it became obvious that it wasn’t going any time soon, and that her eyes were smarting, she got up and excused herself, taking refuge in the bedroom that Aline had given up for Bran, and now for Leah. She flopped back on the bed and breathed deeply. She wasn’t going to cry for the second time, she really wasn’t.

She started when the door opened and realized she had dropped off to sleep, her feet still on the floor. “I was asleep,” she said, groggily wiping her eyes. The clock by the bed told her it had only been half an hour. It felt like longer.

Bran smirked. “Should have let you nap.” A flicker crossed his face, as if he thought perhaps he shouldn’t have joked about sex.

“Oh no, I much preferred being kept awake,” she said, forcing herself to smirk right back. Sex was good. They could do that. Not tonight, she thought. But sometime. She sat up and watched him go into the bathroom to brush his teeth. “This is Aline’s room, you know.”

“Is it?” he said over his toothbrush.

“She’s only staying with Mauro whilst we’re here.”

“Ah,” he added. “That might be it.”

Bran finished and she went to brush her teeth. When she came out, he’d thoughtfully set aside one of his T-shirts for her to sleep in and she changed, climbed into bed. It was a very small bed, she thought. Significantly smaller than they were used to sleeping in. She could see from Bran’s face that he was also thinking the same. Perhaps she was tired enough for it not to matter. She felt exhausted, body and mind.

“Did you talk to her then?” Bran asked, getting into his side.

“No. Audrey told me where she was staying. I _tried_ to talk to her but she avoided me.”

“She’s supposedly one of ours now. You could have ordered her to.”

Leah was stunned. “It genuinely didn’t occur to me to do that.”

He accepted this. “It’s harder with family.”

“I’ve certainly never noticed that you have that problem.”

“Ha ha,” Bran said, turning on his side, facing her. He leaned forward very slowly, telegraphing his intentions, and she allowed him to kiss her softly. “Thank you for this evening. For today.”

“Mmm,” she said, licking her lips, tasting him. 

He stayed close to her, close enough she could feel his breath, to see the flecks of gold in his eyes. He really did have beautiful eyes and, like many men, preposterously thick eyelashes. She felt a wave of love, like she always did. “If I wake you, I apologize.”

“Same,” she said. Then she turned over, her back to him, and attempted to go to sleep. 

*

 _Bran_ didn’t wake her in the end. She felt bed dip with movement, felt his hands rolling her onto her back, and she fought her way to waking. “Really?” They may have made a bargain about this but she had always felt they had at least applied common sense to it. Seducing her after the conversation this afternoon was a little much, she thought. 

He didn’t say anything but pulled her T-shirt up under her armpits, freeing her breasts so he could take a nipple into his mouth. Still half asleep, but warming to the idea, she squirmed against him, hands sleepily petting his hair as he sucked. He switched his attentions to her other breast, always oddly more sensitive, and then pulled off with a ‘pop’. Then he sat back, naked, holding his erection in his hand and looking down at her. His eyes were pure gold, glowing the dark.

“Oh, hello, you,” Leah said quietly, a strike of adrenaline bringing her to wakefulness. 

He, Bran’s wolf, didn’t speak. He never spoke. He just watched her quietly, stroking himself.

In their time together, Bran’s wolf had made love to her only a handful of times. It always followed roughly the same pattern, always in the dark, silent, with a few minutes where he would just look at her, golden eyes roving her body. As if he didn’t have the opportunity to do so very often. At some point, he would be done with this and then he would pound himself into her relentlessly, with very little thought for her pleasure. 

Slowly, Leah pulled the T-shirt off, dropped it over the side of the bed. Experience had taught her he would rip anything that got in the way of full skin contact. She spread her legs and dipped her hand between them, touched herself. She saw her husband’s nose flare. With the wolf, she didn’t care so much about giving herself a good time but she did care that she would be able to take him comfortably. She circled her clit with two fingers, sliding lower, then circling back.

The wolf pounced, suddenly, as he always did, when he had decided enough was enough. Leah had got herself pretty close, despite this, and had been enjoying herself. There was something deeply erotic about him watching her whilst she touched herself. He thrust inside her, stretching her just enough to make her gasp, and then started his mindless hammering. He didn’t kiss, instead he rubbed his face against hers, against her neck, puffs of excited breath brushing her skin. She rubbed herself against him, her nipples wet and hard and catching against his skin, caught the corner of his mouth and kissed him anyway. He was hers, just as Bran was. He had chosen her first, after all.

She could tell he was getting close by the pattern of his breathing. She squeezed a hand between them and pressed hard against her clit, bringing back the orgasm she had nearly reached before. It was a quick-punch orgasm, one that rose quickly and hit hard, then ebbed away into warmth, stimulated by the sensation of him moving inside of her. The wolf raised himself above her, coming with a rapid twitch of his hips, his eyes closed in ecstasy. When they opened again, they were still gold. “Mine,” he said, dipping to nudge her nose with his.

Astonished, Leah stared up at him. “Yes,” she told him. She stroked her hand down his back as he settled against her, nuzzling her neck. “Yours.”

Her husband woke moments later, on top of her, inside of her, with a jerk. She pressed a hand to his back. “Don’t freak out.”

Bran, nevertheless, did freak out. He rolled off her, swearing, and stood next to the bed with his hands folded on top of his head, eyes closed tightly. “Leah, that is _terrifying_.”

“I know, I know.” She winced. He never remembered; the wolf just took over. “I’m not hurt. He didn’t hurt me. He _spoke_.”

Bran dragged hands down his face, pulling at his skin. If she cared to listen, she knew she would be able to hear his heart pounding. “What did he say?”

“Mine.”

Her husband grunted. “Yes, that’s about his level. _Fuck_.” He went into the bathroom. She heard him splash water on his face and then below. He came back, toweling himself off, as if to erase the trace of the act from his body. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.” She gestured to her demonstrably flawless naked body and sat up, holding her knees to her chest. “He’s—I don’t believe he would hurt me.”

“No, not you.” This didn’t seem to comfort Bran, no doubt because he imagined this would not apply to anyone else.

She imagined his thoughts. If the wolf could take over in bed, when else could he do it?

Bran paced a little, shaking his arms as if to shrug off the sensation. He glanced at her, frowned disapprovingly. “I wish you would be more frightened, Leah.”

“I _was_ the first couple of times, I assure you. And I’m careful,” Leah added, trying to reassure him like she always did. She was tempted to point out she would never deny the wolf anything if it kept him calm but suspected it would fall into an area of consent that would distress Bran more. She sighed. There was nothing she could do or say that would console him. “Please come back to bed.”

He held up a hand, asking for more time, and continued pacing. He was still expelling energy. She went to the bathroom, picking up the towel he had dropped on the way, peed and washed herself briskly. Then she pulled the T-shirt back on and climbed under the covers. “Now, Bran,” she said.

Her husband nodded and, this time, when he got into bed he held her close, tucking himself behind her and wrapping arm over her waist, palm flat against her stomach. After the day they’d had, she suddenly needed it. “Tighter,” she said.

As requested, Bran squeezed her, pulling her back against his chest. From the way he buried his neck into her neck, it felt like he needed it too.

“Does he feel… restful?” she asked. Her understanding of Bran’s relationship with the monster inside was tenuous. He only allowed her glimpses, as if afraid of her reaction, but she knew one thing and that sex reinforced the mating bond and thus the way in which Bran caged his beast. 

Her husband put his mouth to her neck, pressed his lips against her skin. “Yes,” he said, eventually, sounding resigned. “He… enjoys you.”

Leah smiled but knew this was certainly not the time to reciprocate. “He needs to work on his foreplay,” she suggested, instead.

Bran growled at her. “Leah.”

Too soon, she thought, firmly closing her eyes.

*

In the morning, her husband was up and out of bed well before her. She listened to him shower, dozing, thinking vaguely about her plans for remodeling the downstairs. They had kicked off the comforter and sheet in the night, too hot, and slept as far apart from each other with just the sheet partially covering them. It had not been a particularly good night’s sleep and she was grateful when Bran dressed and left her so she could bury her face in the cool side of the pillow and get another couple of hours.

She woke up feeling fractionally more refreshed and stumbled into the shower, waking herself up with a blast of water. Mindful of the pack’s finances, Leah showered quickly without much hot water, and dried and dressed in the jeans and the new blue jumper. She assumed she was too late for breakfast but instead found the housekeeper – Maud – had prepared a big bowl of some of the fruit she had bought yesterday and there were fresh breakfast rolls and preserves still laid on the dining table.

Claude was still at the table, with the newspaper and half a cup of coffee. She realized he had been waiting for her. “You’ve made that woman very happy,” he said, nodding back to the kitchen where the housekeeper could be heard humming.

“Oh?”

“The restrictions I put on her made her miserable. Her mother before her was our housekeeper and her mother before that. She felt like she was failing us.”

Leah barely tolerated the humans that were part of their own pack but found herself touched by this woman who had been trying to help in whatever way she could. “Well. I’m glad you and Bran have come to an arrangement that works for the both of you. Speaking of which, where has he – and presumably the Moor - gone to?” Bran had left his cell on the dresser in their room so she hadn’t even been able to message him.

“They’ve gone on a hike with Eileen.”

“Ah,” Leah said. “I knew he planned to try to get to know her better.”

“And I wish him luck with that,” Claude said, saluting her with his coffee cup and a taut smirk.

“She seemed to be enjoying the game last night,” she said, finding herself sounding defensive. She poured herself a glass of orange juice.

“I think that was more for your benefit.” He looked at her over the coffee cup. “It was the first time she had participated in anything. Before that she would just sit over there and read.” He nodded to a corner of the living area, adjusting to the dining room, where there was one armchair tucked away.

“What does she read?”

“She seems to pull a book off the shelf at random, as far as I can tell. She doesn’t even finish them, maybe isn’t even really reading them, just turning the pages. Half the time when you’re talking to her, I’m not even sure she’s there,” he added. 

None of this was exactly bad behavior, Leah thought. Strange, perhaps, but not _bad_. Being in a new place could be very distracting.

“Does she talk to anyone? Audrey told me she’s staying with Mauro whilst we occupy your guest room.”

“He says not. He says she skirts around him, not afraid, just avoids him. If we had any single females, I would have put them together, but we don’t. I thought she would feel safer with my Second.”

Claude looked at her for judgment on this and she shrugged. “She doesn’t smell afraid,” was all Leah could think of saying.

Leah pottered around the lodge for the rest of the morning, keeping out of the housekeeper’s way as she drenched the house in the new products, humming ecstatically as she did so. Leah was very house proud so she tolerated cleaning. She got the feeling that Maud actively enjoyed it.

She flicked through the books on the shelves in the living area, going by scent to see what, if anything, Aline had touched more than most. There was a collection of short stories that Aline’s scent lingered on and Leah flicked through them. Dickens, of all things. The Christmas Carol and some other, lesser known works. Another book was a children’s book, Roald Dahl, the one with the fox. Another was a book about wolves which had lots of pictures.

Leah frowned. She had never personally had the attention span to read, preferring magazines or cookery books. She wondered if Aline was the same. Of course, perhaps she read better in French than she did in English. When Leah had arrived in America, she could only speak French, had to learn whatever was more frequently spoken on the way – be that Dutch, Spanish, English or German. She could even speak a little Welsh now, thanks to Bran.

She went to find Claude, who was working out back on fixing part of the wrap-around porch. He was shirtless and quite a bit bigger, all around, than her husband. She averted her eyes. “Where’s the nearest gas station?” she asked. Then clarified, “Or someplace that sells magazines.”

Claude paused to pick up his T-shirt, wipe the sweat from his face, then answered. “Magazines? I guess the gas station. About five miles that-a-way,” he said, pointing. 

“If Bran comes back, let him know where I’ve gone,” she said airily.

Leah was gone just under half an hour. The gas station also had small range of paperbacks and she picked a few that looked like easy reading. She grabbed some more milk, as well, and topped up the gas in the truck. She returned to find her husband annoyed and waiting for her. No one but she would know he was annoyed, she thought, fondly. Something in the line of his jaw.

“I told Claude where I was going,” Leah said, pre-emptively as she got out of the car. “If you had taken your cell, I would have texted you.”

“I really didn’t think you would need to be told not to leave the lodge,” Bran scolded her, taking the milk.

“I was five miles down the road. And I can take care of myself.” She seemed to be repeating this a lot recently. She had been in danger before, never quite recalled him acting this way.

Her husband gripped her chin between his fingers and made her meet his angry gaze. “Don’t do it again, Leah.”

She pursed her lips at him and, to her shock, he kissed her hard, slipping the arm that wasn’t carrying the milk around her. She was surprised into kissing him back, to opening her mouth in response to his restless tongue. This was a very public display of affection for them, for no good reason that she could see. When Bran pulled back, his lips were wet and so were hers and there was something his eyes, something dark and desperate. She swallowed at the sight of it, lowered her gaze. “I guess we’ve made up,” she said. She hurt, she always would, but it was manageable. 

Bran smiled tentatively, kissed her with gentle lips, a hand smoothing up and down her back. “I hope so.”

*

Lunch was hearty bowls of chicken noodle soup and still-warm crusty rolls with salted butter. She pressed her lips together as Bran carefully pushed the cilantro up the sides of his bowl whilst distracting everyone with a story. ‘Eileen’ had declined to join them for lunch, instead it was Claude, Bran, Asil and herself. Apart from Bran’s diversions, conversation was light. Afterwards, Claude excused himself to return to his woodwork and Bran, Leah and Asil convened in their room.

Asil took the chair by the window, stretched out his legs. His eyes were somnolent. Bran lay on the bed, hands followed on his stomach, staring at the ceiling. They were waiting for Charles to call.

Not being one who particularly enjoyed ‘sitting’ – and she had left all the magazines in the living area – Leah emptied out her emergency backpack onto the dresser, her back to the room. Both Bran and Asil were trying hard to keep relaxed so being in close quarters with them wasn’t as nerve wracking as it could potentially be. Easier than if it had been Asil and Charles, she admitted. Theirs was a combative relationship, one she enjoyed prodding.

She tossed a couple of the protein wrappers into the trash, finished off one of the water bottles. She’d refill them before they left. She held up the night dress she had been wearing during the attack. Surprisingly, it was completely intact, the ‘only’ damage it had sustained were the bloodstains from the head wound which spread halfway down the back, into the delicate lace. She should have put it in cold water to soak; she wasn’t sure it was possible to save it.

“Leah,” Asil murmured warningly.

She glanced at him then around to her husband. Bran was watching her, no longer calm but projecting a deep well of unhappiness. Quickly, she shoved the night dress back into the bag and then kicked off her shoes to climb on the bed to lie next to him, not touching, but close enough. Asil shook his head at her, as if she could possibly have predicted that reaction. Which she could have done. Had Bran decided to throw his blood-stained T-shirt around, she would have been less than pleased as well. No one wanted to see evidence of their mate’s harm.

Bran’s cell phone rung and he answered it, leaving it on his chest. “We’re alone,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Both of them are migrations. One from Portugal.” Leah glanced at Asil. Asil had once dedicated his time to keeping Chastel out of the Iberian Peninsula but it was in the hands of his sons, now. “And another from the Balearics.”

Charles voice was low and angry as he continued. “The rest of the crew were hired mercenaries. Their orders were to kill everyone on sight by whatever means necessary but their specific target was Leah. There was a plane waiting to transport the crew back to Europe – they didn’t have the details of the flight plan but I’m in the process of getting it.”

Leah rolled onto her side so she could watch her husband’s profile. “We should speak to Christiansen about the mercenaries. If there are other werewolves for hire, he would know about it,” she said quietly.

“I’ve left him a message to call me. I think he’s in Uganda at the moment.” Charles exhaled sharply. “The two we have were paid for their efforts. I have the details of their bank accounts in front of me and the payments began as soon as they arrived here and opened an American bank account. A monthly stipend that increased ten-fold approximately three months ago.”

Bran hummed. “So someone has them here on some kind of retainer. With a project bonus for killing my wife. How delightful.”

“It seems so. One actually had an increase about a year ago – Anna is going to find out more. See what kinds of things this person has been doing in America. I will try to trace the money back to see who I can link it to.”

Leah closed her eyes. Each of the migration applications were overseen by Bran and Charles. They were interviewed, their Alphas gave them references. She didn’t know how many of them there were but it had to be close to one-hundred. How many of them were corrupt?

She felt Bran turn to look at her. She opened her eyes. “Three months ago – that is precisely the timing for Aline to see you for the first time,” he said. She nodded. He both looked and sounded angry, which meant the hairs on her arms had stood to attention. “I need you to speak to her today. If you need to be blunt, do so. If she is trying to kill you, we must know why. If you can’t get this information from her, I will have to force it and I am not sure her mind will be able to take it, innocent or not.”

Order given, Bran sat up with the phone in his hand, legs swiveling over the side of the bed, his back to her. “Anything else?” he said to Charles.

“Nothing about this.” There was a murmur, Anna, in the background. Charles grunted. “Leah, can you call Kara.”

Leah jerked. “Is everything okay?”

“She is certainly upset about something but won’t tell anyone here.”

Kara didn’t really get ‘upset’ about things, being quite level headed. Leah assumed it was something to do with a boy – which explained why she didn’t want to talk about anyone about it – or her parents. “I’ll call her straight away.”

“No, _you_ will deal with Aline first,” Bran corrected sharply. “I need this over with. Kara can wait.”

Leah pressed her lips together, holding back the desire to contradict this. “Yes, Bran,” she said, meekly. She caught Asil’s eyes, entirely accidentally, and quickly looked away. An uncomfortable silence passed over the room, broken only when Charles said goodbye and hung up.

Very slowly, Asil sat up. “I’ll leave you now,” he said, telegraphing his intentions in word and deed. His eyes were lowered, ever the submissive to his Alpha.

Leah decided he was wise to escape. Last night, she reminded herself, the wolf had visited them, which said that Bran’s mind was not in its best shape. Whatever state Bran had worked his way into, however, she knew it was one only he could work his way out of. “I shall go and find Aline.”

“Stay in or near to the house,” her husband instructed.

“Yes, Bran,” she replied, again. She made to crawl off the bed, then stopped and leaned over to kiss the side of his very tense neck, twice. She was fine. She loved him. He didn’t want her to die. She could live with that. “Come find me when you’re less homicidal.”

He snorted. “Both of you get out.”

*

“Did the hike not go well?” she whispered to Asil as they made their way downstairs.

“It was… fine. She was talkative, almost manically so.”

‘Talkative’ was not a word Leah ever would have applied to the sister she had once known. “What about?”

“The pack. Colorado. Her plans for work. Apparently, she trained as an accountant in France but she will need to re-train here.”

Leah nodded. Though she knew there was more to it than that, Aline had always been very good numerically, far eclipsing Leah in their lessons. She wondered if ‘creative’ accountancy had been one of the ways in which she helped Chastel. Charles occupied much the same role for them, when he wasn’t out in the world slaughtering their people. “Anything else?”

“She’s good at diverting questions,” Asil mused. Again, not a skill Leah had. “I think Bran found it frustrating. But then he was already in a difficult mood.”

Asil gave her a look to suggest that she might be able to shed some light on that. She shook her head. “It’s unrelated,” she said, assuming it was about the wolf’s visitation.

“Ah,” he said. There was a wealth of feeling in that one syllable.

There was no one in the house again but Leah knew Claude had asked a few of the pack to prep the beds in the back yard for Spring, and Aline had been one of them. Leah wandered outside with a mug of coffee as a prop. She sat on an ornate but rusted iron bench, watching her sister and the others work. Aline had put her long, dark hair up into a top-knot and was wearing loose jeans, torn at the knee, and an oversized sweater that was probably one of the men’s. She had a look of deep concentration on her face as she forced the spade into the earth and turned it. After a prolonged moment of observation, Aline finally glanced over at Leah and then then quickly looked back at what she was doing.

Bran had reminded her that she could simply instruct Aline to speak to her but Leah was oddly loath to do it. Normally, she enjoyed lording the superiority her mate gave her over all and sundry, particularly outside of the Aspen Creek pack who knew her and the complex dynamic of her relationship with Bran. But somehow she just wanted Aline to talk to her willingly.

When her hot drink was nearly finished, she stood up and walked over. “Have you gardened much before?” she asked, attempting a light, conversational tone.

Aline shook her head. “No.”

“Don’t like to get your hands dirty?” Leah suggested. At least before they had been Changed, they had both been brought up to be ladies, the kind who carried knives in their stockings and stays. Rummaging around in soil would not have been an acceptable activity.

Her sister gave her a sideways look. She slammed the spade into the dirt, pressing down forcefully with her scuffed boot. “No garden.”

Leah narrowed her eyes. The traces of French she had heard before were gone. Had she been faking it? “Your English is very good.” Like many Europeans, she had an American accent, as if she had learnt through television programs.

“ _Merci_.”

“Do you speak any other languages?” _Now_ , she added, mentally. 

“Just Spanish.”

Leah smiled, trying to make it sweet, and changed tactics. “Did you enjoy the hike with _my husband_ this morning?”

“He’s a very interesting man,” Aline said, baring her teeth. “How _did_ you two meet?”

“He picked me out of a line-up.” Leah sipped her coffee, watching a variety of expressions cross Aline’s face. _Not_ so good an actress, Leah thought triumphantly.

“You’re being funny,” her sister decided, eventually, brushing aside a piece of hair that had got caught in her mouth.

“Am I,” Leah replied, dry as paper. She glanced down into her mug with mock-surprise. “Oh, look, I’ve finished my drink. Come with me to make another.”

Blowing out an annoyed breath, but seeing that she had no choice, Aline pushed the spade into the dirt and followed Leah into the house.

*

Aline sat with her head propped in her hands at the small table in the kitchen that looked as if it was Maud’s ‘office’, littered as it was with organized piles of recipes, receipts and a To Do list with various people’s handwriting giving her instructions.

“I overheard Mauro. He sat that someone tried to kill you and that’s why you’re here,” her sister said, sitting back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest. Unlike outside, now her sister’s face was stormy with annoyance.

“That is correct.” Leah poured boiling water into a mug, dissolving the instant coffee. She added two spoonsful of sugar, the only way to make the drink palatable. “Not for the first time, actually.”

There had been an attempt in the 1920s, an Alpha who thought he could challenge Bran. He had underestimated her and she had gutted him. She wished she had been able to do the same for the men who had destroyed her living room. Anna had sent a photo of the damage to Bran’s phone; it was extensive. She mentally had to scale up her original ideas for renovation.

“I would imagine being the Marrok’s wife makes you something of a hot commodity.”

Leah smiled. She was pleased with the direction this conversation was going. “How so?”

Aline shrugged. Continued to look annoyed. “Just as any Alpha’s mate is, I guess. It was why Chastel never mated. Didn’t want to be vulnerable.”

“Come now. That’s not the only reason,” Leah said lightly. “He _ate_ all his romantic interests.”

Her sister spluttered. “Disgusting,” she said. Whether this was supposed to be a comment on Leah’s dark humor or their father’s favorite hobby, she didn’t know.

Leah tasted the coffee, winced, and added another spoonful of sugar. “How are you getting on here?”

“It’s very different.”

“I have no doubt.” She had seen how difficult Juste had found it to adapt to the more ‘informal’ approach of the North American way. “Are you sure you don’t want one?” Leah held up an empty mug.

Aline shook her head, revolted. “ _That_ is not coffee,” she said, lips pursed in disapproval.

Leah came to sit opposite her, their knees nearly touching under the small table. Were it not for Bran’s strength and position, they would be a match for dominance, Leah thought. They looked at each other for a long moment. It was an odd situation. Strangers but not strangers, Leah thought. Had this woman tried to kill her? Or was she the puppet dangling at the end of someone else’s strings?

“I’m glad you’re alive,” Leah said, eventually, quietly. Perhaps she should have started with that. That would probably have been normal.

“You as well.” Aline shifted, the stormy look ebbing and flowing. She settled for a more curious expression. “When did you change your name?”

Sometimes Leah forgot that this was not the name she had been born with. Leah Cornick had been her name now for significantly longer. She _was_ Leah Cornick. “On the ship. I took it from a Dutch woman who died. We had a passing similarity.”

Leah remembered every detail of that journey – the stench of the unwashed passengers, the sickness, the sick-sweet scent of decay and death. As a werewolf, she hadn’t suffered from disease like those around her but starvation had been a real risk. She had conserved her energy, kept still and quiet whilst the humans had died around her. The original Leah had died with her child clutched to her chest. Typhoid, probably.

“I knew the name of the Marrok’s wife but I never associated it with you,” Aline said in wistful tones. A wicked smile crossed her face, one that Leah remembered and met with her own. “I have never been more shocked in my life than when I saw you walk through that door.”

“Me either.”

They lapsed into silence again, the brief moment of collusion gone. She should have planned what she was going to say to Aline. Bran would certainly have done so. This softly softly approach was somewhat beyond her. But if it didn’t work, Bran would break Aline’s mind.

“What did you do for him?” Leah asked, choosing another topic she was personally interested in.

“I dealt with the money, mostly.” Aline traced some figures on the table. “After he killed my husbands, he realized I was more valuable to him in a business sense.”

Leah’s heart squeezed. She hadn’t known that Aline had been married. “Did you love them?”

“No,” she said, bluntly, shaking her head. “They were connections he wanted. They weren’t as bad as they could have been. Our wolves were never mated.”

That was something, then. Some didn’t survive the death of a mate. Some, like Bran, were forever changed by it. She stared down into her half-finished coffee, thoughts of Blue-Jay Woman and Mercedes flicking through her mind. She cast them aside. The coffee really _was_ disgusting. At home, she had her own coffee machine and ground beans freshly. “How angry was he, after I escaped?”

Aline snorted. “Very. He killed all the lieutenants and all the servants.”

There were normally six or seven lieutenants the chateau on a six-month rotating basis, along with a dozen human servants. “And you?”

The moue of distaste on her face told Leah it had not been easy. “Well, thankfully, he took most of his anger out on the wolves who had let you escape. By the time he got to me, I think he just wanted to make sure I knew never to try.” She sighed and if anything looked at Leah sympathetically. “It was a long time and many beatings ago, Leah. I don’t resent you taking the opportunity to escape. Not if the only other choice was to be married to Bouchard and raped until I died.”

With relief, Leah felt this wasn’t a lie. The tension she was carrying ebbed ever-so-slightly. If Aline didn’t resent her, surely it followed that she might not be able to kill her? “I _was_ ecstatic to hear when Bouchard was finally killed. Bran tells me Michel is an immeasurably better man.”

A thread of tension ran through Aline’s body that Leah wondered at. “I think even Chastel was glad of it. Bouchard was getting out of hand. He, if anyone, took your escape worse – always railing about it for years and years afterwards, claiming that Chastel could have done more, that he should get a replacement for you. I don’t think I realized how obsessed he was. His family too.” They both shuddered. Leah had known, of course. “It was timely, though, because shortly after he was killed, your Marrok gave his ultimatum regarding the human girls. Bouchard would never have stood for that.”

That made sense. Bouchard had liked to follow in his Alpha’s footsteps. Had often ‘procured’ the girls for him, in fact. “I always wondered what happened behind the scenes after Bran did that.” 

Aline _pffed_ , as if it didn’t particularly matter. “Oh, Chastel was angry, of course. Angrier that the Marrok had beaten him than anything else. But he just continued doing what he wished, but less publicly. In Eastern Europe, human girls disappear all the time.”

Leah exhaled, shaking her head. “I was glad Madden had him killed,” she said, bluntly. “I thought if you were alive it would mean your freedom, at least.”

“He needed to die,” her sister agreed, staunchly. Truthfully.

Again, Leah felt this was a positive step. “Even though there now seems to be more problems in Europe? For you?”

“They’ll sort themselves out.” This, Leah felt, she didn’t really believe. But sometimes hope felt like that – like a half lie. Her sister shifted in her chair again, as if the topic discomfited her. “I should really go back outside. I don’t want the others to think I’m shirking my duties.”

Leah nodded, disappointed she hadn’t fully risen to the bait. “Can we talk again? Tonight after dinner?” Her voice was perhaps more hopeful than she would have liked.

“I think I would like that.” She stood, then paused. One corner of her mouth lifted. “Did he really pick you from a line-up?”

“Indeed he did. My Alpha had the females line up in a row and Bran looked at each of us and asked to ‘interview’ me.” A disturbed flicker crossed Aline’s face. “He did really mean interview, actually,” Leah clarified.

Not that the ‘interview’ hadn’t swiftly led to other things. She had a white-hot flashback to the first time Bran had come inside her, her skirts bunched up around her waist, his hands on either side of her head. She hadn’t thought of _that_ in a very long time. It was a memory she ought to revisit more often, she decided, as heat pooled low in her belly.

“Sounds barbaric. I’ll admit, it looks like, I thought—” Aline waved a hand. She looked pained. “A love match.”

Laughter, real laughter, bubbled up inside of her. Leah let it out. “No, it certainly wasn’t that.”

Perhaps she had misinterpreted it but she thought Aline looked relieved.

*

Leah had little chance to speak to Bran before dinner that evening. From the couple of sentences they exchanged in passing, it did not appear that he had made much progress in managing his temper – something she was inevitably going to bear the brunt of when they were alone that night – but he had apparently found a way to listen to the conversation with her sister. He had an uncanny ability to disappear himself, almost to the point of invisibility. People just didn’t notice him. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had just walked around the house and sat outside the kitchen window to listen. If anyone else had done that, even Charles, she would have sensed them. 

“How would you like me to proceed?” she whispered. They were on the middle landing of the stairs – her on the way up to their room, he on the way down.

“Ask her if she is in touch with anyone from back home.” Bran caught her wrist, as she made to leave. “Don’t assume you can trust her.”

“I don’t, of course, I don’t. Are you going to do something about this?” Leah said, waving her hand at the nearly visible cloud of anger around him. Such was his particular power, his anger felt cool and it was noticeably chillier nearer him. She was used to it but she had seen a number of Claude’s wolves look at him tremulously.

“I’m _trying_ ,” he growled at her. 

Bran was normally better than this. She tried to be sympathetic, even though she felt she personally had managed to coax herself down from a great emotional high with relative success. “Can I help?” she asked, practically.

“Later,” he said, in a meaningful way that reverberated inside her. He jogged down the stairs.

“Lucky me,” Leah called after him. He cast her a look over his shoulder and she saw a glint of humor in his eyes. She felt vaguely triumphant. If he could still laugh, there was hope he might be chivvied out of whatever this funk was. And she, meanwhile, was _fine_ , she thought. So fine.

She passed Asil’s room on the way to theirs. He was lying on the small bed, reading a book, the door open just enough to indicate he wouldn’t mind being interrupted. She pushed it open. “Did you spend any time with Bran this afternoon?”

“Avoided him entirely like everyone else,” Asil said shortly, turning a page.

“Hmm,” she said, leaving him to his reading.

Dinner was a lavish Tex-Mex spread liberally festooned with cilantro, which Leah honestly thought might send her husband over the edge. She found herself clamping her hand down onto his thigh throughout the meal, eating with one hand. This trip aside, they were not normally a publicly touchy-feely couple, quite the opposite in fact, but if she dug her fingers into the meat of his muscle, she could feel Bran’s tension easing just enough that everyone might have a pleasant dinner.

When the last morsel of ice-cream was finished, Leah thanked Maud for the meal and invited ‘Eileen’ to step outside, whilst the rest of the pack scrambled for what appeared to be their ritual post-dinner basketball game.

“Stay where I can see you,” Bran told her, her wrist once again held in a death grip but a bright, shiny smile on his face for everyone else.

Leah kissed him softly – a little like kissing a Piranha – and grabbed her wine glass. “Yes, dear.”

They wandered a little way into the back yard, far enough from the basketball game that they couldn’t be heard. There were solar powered lights stamped into the freshly turned flower beds. Aline outlined the plans they had for the garden, the most animated Leah had seen her be. She was particularly interested in the vegetables that Maud wanted to grow.

“I have a small kitchen garden. Smaller than this,” Leah admitted. “It’s a constant battle with insects and slugs.”

“I cannot imagine you gardening. I can’t believe you can _cook_.”

“I learnt.” Leah shrugged; she’d had no choice. “The gardening I mostly do for maintenance. I _like_ cooking. I like feeding people well,” she added.

Aline’s nose wrinkled as if she couldn’t possible believe this. “I suppose.”

Leah took a mouthful of wine. It was a pretty average Cabernet Sauvignon but perfectly drinkable. “Are you in touch with anyone back home?”

“No,” her sister said shortly, resentfully. “The Marrok forbade me.”

This was true but Leah realized she had phrased her question in the present tense. A good wolf could lie under the right circumstances. Aline would have had plenty of practice. “There’s no one who would have wanted to know you were safe?” She made ensure it sounded pitying, correctly anticipating that it would annoy Aline, as it would have Leah.

Aline scowled and bent down, picked up a rock from the bed, and tossed it. “Michel knew. I—spoke to him. After.”

Leah knew that Michel had been instrumental in getting Aline out of Europe but she hadn’t actually applied much thinking to _why_. Surely there were many innocent wolves who had suffered at Chastel’s hand. If he was going to risk his wrath, why was Aline so special? Was it just because she was female? “You were close?”

There was a long, involved pause. Leah’s eyebrows climbed into her forehead with each second that passed. “Aline, were you having an affair with Michel?”

Aline didn’t need to speak. Her face said it all before she tried to cover it up with her ubiquitous stormy expression.

“He’s married. He’s _mated_ ,” Leah said, stupidly, sifting her way through the relationships she knew of within the European contingent. Hadn’t Bran said there was a wife? An ambitious one? “Isn’t he?”

“Their _wolves_ are mated. The human halves aren’t involved. They’re not even really married,” Aline said dismissively. 

Far be it for Leah to criticize someone else’s relationship but she found herself quite shocked at all the parameters of this situation. “Did they have an agreement?” she asked, already suspecting the answer would be negative. Very, _very_ rarely did a werewolf couple have an open relationship in such circumstances, particularly if they were an Alpha pair. The more dominant, the less they could share. It was why she categorically knew Bran could not cheat on her, even if the human part of him so desired.

There was a raw, openness to Aline’ face now and, perhaps knowing this for the vulnerability that it was, her sister looked away. “He loves me.”

An inkling formed as she absorbed this. “You told Michel. About seeing me,” Leah guessed.

“Michel is completely trustworthy,” Aline said with confidence.

“Aline, he was Chastel’s.” He was one of the ‘old wolves’ of Europe. She thought of Bran’s comment, all those years ago. Michel was witch-born. Michel was _biding his time._ “He could never be completely trustworthy,” Leah said gently, wondering how her sister could be so blind. “You know that.”

“What does that matter? Chastel is dead, has been for years,” she hissed angrily, glancing over her shoulder as if afraid they were being overheard. “And in any case, we were _very_ careful. He never knew about us.” 

She was right. Chastel wasn’t the problem any more. The fear that Leah felt for her sister hiding this relationship from him was irrelevant. “Short of having no physical relationship whatsoever, I can’t see how his mate never found out. If Bran touches another woman,” not that he did, “however casually, I know it. His mate would be the same.”

Her sister did not like being interrogated in this way. She started to leave. “Stay where you are,” Leah ordered, drawing from her husband to give the order knee-quaking authority.

Aline came to a rigid halt, but kept her back to Leah. God knew what it cost her to do that, Leah thought, walking around to face her sister. “Tell me about Michel. What is he like?”

“Why do you want to know this?” Her voice was plaintive.

“Tell me about him.” She bared her teeth. “I’m told he’s weak. Pitifully so. That Chastel beat him regularly.”

Aline’s lip curled. “That’s just what he wanted Chastel to think. He was stronger than they all knew. He could rule Europe with his eyes closed.”

Oh, damn, Leah thought. “With his mate at his side, Aline?” she asked, twisting the knife in a little harder.

Her sister flinched. “Yes, yes, probably,” she muttered, looking down at the grass. There was no anger there. Just hurt. A deep well of pain. She sucked in a breath and looked up at the stars, reflecting back their sparkle in her eyes. She exhaled and it was dry and bitter. “She’s an old family, too. Practically werewolf aristocracy. Bouchard was her uncle. It was why he mated with her, after he killed Bouchard. It appeased Chastel that they were together.”

Leah pulled a face. She thought she had met that uncle, maybe even Michel’s wife, then. There had been some ‘ceremonies’ she had gone through with Bouchard to mark the great occasion of their engagement. “That whole family was completely unhinged.” They feared and adored Chastel, saw in him the ‘old ways’ that they all desired, when humans were prey and prey alone. “I don’t miss the incestuous nature of Europe, I can tell you that.”

Aline laughed, but it was entirely without humor. “It’s why Michel thought I should come here. All those old wolves, desperate to fuck me, to show how they could tame Chastel’s daughter and take his place.”

“When all you wanted was him.” Leah rubbed a hand over her face. It was too much. “She had to have known.”

“Michel said she didn’t,” Aline’s voice was high, plaintive. “He said her retribution would have been immediate. We _were_ together for half a century.”

 _Retribution_. Bran had said his wife was ambitious. Oh, how she wished she could talk to Bran the way he talked to her, to ask him questions, run her ideas by him whilst she was still talking to Aline.

She had an idea. “Can you call Michel for me?” Leah took Bran’s cell from her back pocket. She had been going to call Kara after talking to Aline. “Can you call him and ask him if she ever found out?”

Aline was suspicious. “Why?”

“Just do it.”

The lure of speaking to Michel again was too much. Aline snatched the phone from Leah and plugged in the phone number she obviously knew off by heart. It was not the number that Bran had stored in his phone for Michel, she noted.

It rang twice. Then, “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

A door closed loudly at the other end. “ _Mon cœur_ , you must warn me when you are going to call…” Michel’s voice was soft. Loving? Leah wondered. And this was obviously not the first, or even the second time Aline had called him.

Aline had closed her eyes to hide her feelings at hearing his voice, missing Leah’s accusatory glare. “I know. It was important. I have to ask you something. Did Sabine ever find out? About us?”

“ _Non_ , Aline. You know that. It would be impossible.”

Truth. Aline raised her eyebrows, to check that Leah heard it. Leah reached over and tapped the ‘mute’ button. “Ask him if he told his mate that you had seen me.”

“What? Why would he do that?” she demanded.

“Someone just tried to kill me, Aline, which is an attack on the Marrok. _Ask him_.” She unmuted and held her breath.

Aline swallowed. “Did you… did you tell her that the Marrok’s mate is my sister?” she whispered.

There was a pause. “Aline, why do you want to know this?”

Her sister sucked in a sharp, pained breath, dark eyes widening. Apparently that was answer enough “You told _her_?” she asked, audibly wounded.

“I— she wanted to know what was so important that you called me when you had been forbidden from doing so.”

Leah tipped her head back. Oh, fuck, she thought. She gestured to Aline to hang up the phone but her sister shook her head. “How did she know it was me? Does she know I’ve talking to you?”

“Of course, _ma cherie._ You know how this works. I have to give a little so she doesn’t get suspicious.”

Angry tears blossomed in Aline’s eyes. “Damn you,” she whispered, finally hanging up the phone. She handed it to Leah. “There. Happy now?”

“Not particularly,” Leah said drily.

Aline ran off, heading towards the main road. Leah looked over to the basketball game and caught the attention of one of the members of the pack – Audrey’s husband. She gestured. “Follow her!” she ordered.

He nodded and he and another pack-mate jogged off into the trees.

*

First she told Bran about Michel and Aline. Her husband lay on the small bed, staring at the ceiling and ‘hmm’d. Asil, in his usual seat by the window, also ‘hmm’d.

“Did you know about them?” Leah asked. “From your conversations with Michel?”

“No. Instead, he rather gave me the impression that he had watched her grow up and cared for her.” Bran sucked on his teeth thoughtfully. “Such was the precedent he had set on previous interactions, his care for a vulnerable female didn’t strike me as too odd.”

“If he wanted Chastel’s Europe, and felt he could have it, surely maintaining his grip on Chastel’s daughter would have benefited him more than working with you to send her away,” Asil hypothesized to the room at large.

This, Bran seemed to agree with. “Yes, it doesn’t quite work, does it?”

Leah exhaled. “Here’s the next part. What do you know about Michel’s mate?”

“Sabine?” Asil said, narrowing his eyes as he thought. “Not a great deal. An old, bloodthirsty family with ties to Spain as well as France. Reasonably dominant, I think. Older than Michel. I always thought her quite cunning but she can’t be particularly bright if she missed her husband having an affair.”

“I can assure you it has nothing to do with bring bright,” Leah said, annoyed with almost everyone involved in this conversation, including their subjects. “It’s instinct. My hypothesis is that she knew. Without question, she knew.”

Bran gave her a grim smile. “I would have to agree with my wife on this one.”

The Moor shrugged. “So? She would surely be glad of Aline’s expulsion to the barbaric New World, then.”

“Yes, after _fifty years_ ,” Leah extolled dramatically and Asil whistled, acknowledging this was a long time for an ‘affair’ to go unnoticed, “all she would want is that Aline moved into the Marrok’s tender care and lived happily ever after. No. She is a werewolf female. If she didn’t want to rip Aline’s face off, then I don’t know my own kind.”

“Another point to Leah,” Bran added. This time she gave him the grim smile.

“That’s not it, though. Her family isn’t just an old French one. She was the niece of one of Chastel’s biggest fans. The Butcher.”

“Ho-ho!” Asil cried, almost excited at the reminder of the man. His face lit up, as older wolves often did when they spoke of those who were deservedly gone. “Of course. Now that’s something. _Bouchard_ gave Chastel a run for his money in terms of depravity. And _she_ mated with the man who killed her uncle? My word, I don’t miss Europe.”

Leah smiled at Asil, as he reflected back her own words. “Just so. I would hypothesize that if anyone is going to be pulling puppet strings here, it would be Sabine. An ambitious woman, like you said, Bran. Married the Alpha who replaced her Uncle. Who waited out her husband’s affair with the Alpha’s daughter. What could she have done, in any case? Complained to Chastel? What if he decided his daughter would be a better, more useful match for Michel?”

Bran was looking at her, a small smile on his face. “Go on.”

She cracked her knuckles, getting into it. “Chastel goes to Seattle, gets murdered by Madden. Like everyone, Sabine believes this was actually you. She – and whatever of her insane family remain – wants revenge. But acting against the Marrok is a difficult business, as the Hardesty witches just so thoughtfully reminded us. It takes time to plan. And in any case, Europe is suddenly in turmoil, a power vacuum waiting to be filled. I can only imagine she would have mated Michel, the man who killed her uncle, because she saw in him someone who could one day be powerful. Who, like her, was biding his time. Here is his opportunity to do that. And yet her husband is _still_ fucking Chastel’s daughter.”

Both Bran and Asil flinched at her use of the word. She smiled. “Aline said it was _Michel_ who suggested she come here but I would bet you anything it was _Sabine_ who gave him the idea. It would kill two birds for her. Get rid of the other woman but equally, another woman who could marry someone else, give him her supposed ‘authority’ and be an additional competition for power in Europe.”

“So she orchestrates that and thinks her problem is solved,” Asil added, tapping his fingers on his knee.

“And in a way it serves her better because my _stupid_ sister continues to call Michel and Michel ‘I have to give a little’ tells his mate little snippets about what’s going on here. And, finally, he tells her that Aline has seen Chastel’s long-lost sister, who is the Marrok’s mate. And I’m guessing I was already a cause for resentment too, in her family. I was to marry Bouchard – happily uniting the two families – and apparently they were plenty resentful that I escaped that fate. _Now_ Sabine has an idea for revenge. She could kill me, revenge Chastel in a way that she knew would hurt you _and_ get revenge for slighting her uncle. And if it hurts Aline, too, all the better.” She couldn’t imagine Sabine didn’t have long-term plans for Aline, either.

Bran’s eyes were closed, a line on his brow. “That’s a lot of supposition,” he mused when she was finished, though he was not dismissing it immediately.

Asil, too, was thinking hard. “If we could follow the money back to the source, it would help. I agree,” he gave Leah a surprised look, “that this is the way some of our European brethren might think. I have always been surprised at how solidly Chastel was supported by some families, the families that benefited from his depravity. The drugs. The human trafficking. It was only in the last few decades that he began to grow bored and end those relationships. She could well be one of the few left standing.”

Bran sat up, reached for his cell phone. He typed quickly. “I’m giving Charles Sabine’s details. Perhaps it will help him to have a hypothetical destination.” 

She nodded; that made sense.

“So. Is Aline innocent, then?” Asil asked. 

“Of planning revenge upon me, and Leah, perhaps,” Bran said. “We will have to get some real evidence for sure, either Charles’s money trail or a confession from Sabine. And Michel may not be innocent of his wife’s actions, either.”

“And then?”

“I will respond proportionally.” This was delivered neutrally but they all knew what it would mean. Sabine, if it was Sabine, would die at the Marrok’s hands.

Leah yawned suddenly and this precipitated Asil’s departure. He stood and nodded. “Goodnight, both of you. This has been a fascinating evening.”

Alone, the atmosphere in the room shifted. She would have expected Bran to be a little more relaxed, now that they had a hypothesis. Instead, he was frowning, the cloud from earlier returning. She was puzzled by it and said so. “What’s going on? I know you have every right to be angry about an attack on the house, but it seems to be clinging to you,” she said. ‘Clinging’ was the right choice of word.

“It’s not that. And it’s not the damn house, Leah. They fired a missile at you.” He exhaled. “I have not yet come to terms with what it meant for you to have been his daughter,” Bran said to her. His eyes were cool. “I know for you it was a long time ago but for me it is yesterday and I am finding it challenging to not react as if that were the case. I just need some time to process.” He stood and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to shower.”

Leah undressed, slipping last night’s T-shirt on. It now smelled headily of the both of them. She would probably appropriate it for use at home, when he was away. She plaited her hair back, listening to Bran rummage around in the bathroom, turn on the shower. It was nearly midnight so she was hoping that the pipework wouldn’t keep the rest of the household awake.

She thought of her husband, wet and angry in the shower, and a little shiver went through her.

Bran didn’t look unduly surprised when she stepped into the shower with him and just watched her silently when she turned off the water. Leah put a hand on his chest and pushed him back against the tiles. She kissed his mouth softly and he reached for the hem of the T-shirt. “Not yet,” she said. Then she looked at him whilst she slowly dropped to her knees, kissing his chest, his navel and his hip on the way. Bran’s mouth formed an ‘o’ and his eyes darkened.

It was but the work of a few seconds for Bran to become hard in her mouth. This was an area Leah had put quite a bit of study into – trying various techniques to see what worked best for him, as he had done for her. Without question, the simplicity of holding his gaze whilst she sucked him down as wetly as possible did it for him every time. After a while, he’d touch the side of her head lightly, gentle pressure directing the rhythm and she would adjust accordingly, taking him into the back of her throat. 

Today, Bran’s grip on her head was firmer, guiding her to take him faster, hips thrusting minutely against her face as she bobbed up and down. There was power in this act, of holding him within her so intimately, of undoing him. She brushed her fingers against his balls, feeling them tight up against his body, ready. She shuffled closer, adjusting the angle slightly, sucking and swirling the head before swallowing the whole of him once more and feeling his release surge through him. She started swallowing over and over, still moving her head. Vaguely, she heard him saying something and it was only after she had swallowed the last drop of him that her brain connected. He had been repeating ‘gentle’ to himself, over and over again. She smiled as she let him go, kissed his hip. “You were very gentle,” she said against his skin.

Bran huffed out a breath of laughter, resting the back of his head against the tile. “I love when you do that,” he told her, stroking her hair.

She sat back on her heels and licked her lips. She assessed him. He _was_ more relaxed. “You look, and feel, a little better.”

Bran held out a hand to her and pulled her up. He kissed her enthusiastically and traced the edge of his thumb through the wet crease between her legs. “Let me return this thoughtful gesture.”

A zing of pleasure went through her. “How _delightful_.”

*

At four in the morning, Leah gave up and tossed her pillow onto the floor.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” Bran muttered, face in the mattress.

He made no move to suggest he would follow up on this statement so she ignored him and flailed around until she found the crumpled comforter, arranged it into something that might resemble a bedroll and lay down on top of it on the floor. It was instantly better. She sighed and curled into her favorite sleeping position on her front, one knee raised to one side, the other straight. “I swear we used to sleep in a twin bed every night.”

“Badly,” he pointed out from above. “Then you insisted we got a bigger bed.”

She thought about it. “Which was surely about this size?”

He grunted. “Comparatively luxurious to us then. Little did we realize.”

Leah missed her bed. Her big, California king bed. It was possible for them to sleep together in that bed, provided they each stay on their own side. No chance of one of them taking out the other with a flailing, nightmare-inspired arm.

After a while, Bran shuffled over to the side of the bed she had just deserted. A hand reached down to rest on her back. “Hmm?” she said, thinking he wanted something.

Her husband said nothing. Her eyes drifted closed, the slight warmth of his hand oddly soothing. 

“I have been thinking,” Bran finally said, jolting her awake, though his words were quiet. “The first time I met you I offered you precisely the same kind of bargain you had been making with every man in your life before me. Does that make me just as bad, I wonder?”

She didn’t have an answer for that. Whilst she hadn’t thought of it in the same terms – Bran wasn’t her jailor, for one – she supposed it was similar. She had understood it, and Bran, and had found security in the bargain they made. But— “It’s different. I wanted you. I still want you,” she added, truthfully.

His thumb moved on her back, rubbing forwards and backwards. “I was glad, when he died. But also glad that I hadn’t had to do it myself. Now I wish it had been me.”

Leah smiled into her pillow. “I can understand that feeling.”

He said no more and the next time she woke it was when his phone went off, seemingly seconds later, and it was light. Bran answered and she listened to him confirm plans with Charles. She was relieved to hear that they would be going home today. She was less thrilled to hear that they would be driving.

“Can’t we fly?” she complained from the floor. She would tolerate a metal tube of humans if it meant she could get home _faster_.

Bran looked over the mattress at her. His hair was all over the place. He looked, and she would never say this out loud to him in a million years, adorable. “Not in my current frame of mind. And you are not flying without me.”

She climbed back into bed with him and he moved to make room. They really hadn’t spent so much time together in years, she thought, draping herself over him with alacrity. “How is your current frame of mind?”

“Troubled,” Bran said, wiping a hand over his face. “My wolf is tearing me up inside. He thinks I should be hunting down this Sabine right now. He thinks you’re not safe – that you weren’t and I didn’t know it and that you still aren’t and I’m doing nothing about it.”

Leah patted his chest. “I had no idea he was so opinionated.”

“He is only interested in two things: violence and you. _Don’t_ be flattered by that,” her husband instructed, though she obviously was. She grinned and hid her face against his shoulder. He pinched her behind.

They dozed for a few minutes, waking only when they heard Asil’s door open and close. Bran stroked her back. “You two seem on better terms.”

“We cleared the air,” she said.

“I didn’t realize there was air that needed to be cleared.”

Leah turned her head so her chin rested on his chest. “I apologized,” she said, not without pride. She was still embarrassed, though. She could feel her face was flushed.

“What for?”

“Are you being obtuse? What do you think?”

Bran continued to look baffled. That he allowed her to see he was at a loss could only mean he really and truly was. She pushed herself up. “You know,” she said, decisively, “this is a thing that is in the past and can stay in the past. If you truly want to know, I will tell you, but no one involved looks particularly good and I don’t believe it’s necessary to drag it all up again.”

His fingers trailed over the end of her plait, dangling over her shoulder. A small smile curved his lips. “That’s fine by me. I am pleased you are on better terms, regardless.” 

*

Aline and Leah had an awkward parting. Aline was angry and heartbroken and blamed Leah for both these things. Leah fundamentally didn’t know how to say goodbye to someone she once loved – and might still love - and was disappointed that her good sister had behaved so monumentally foolishly. But, then, perhaps they were both stupid about love.

“This is my cell phone number and my email address,” Leah said, offering her a piece of paper. The vulnerability of this gesture was daunting. She attempted to sound confident, like the all-powerful Marrok’s wife. “If you ever want to speak to me, just ask Claude and he’ll let you.”

Half expecting Aline to shred the piece of paper, Leah was relieved when she simply stuck it into the pocket of her jeans, sniffed, and walked away. She all but skipped back to Bran.

As they started their road trip, Leah in the back, she reflected that her best case scenario had come true. Aline was not here to kill her. She had family again. And Bran knew. Admittedly, said family didn’t want to speak to her but that might not always be the case. _Maybe_ she would be speaking to her by Christmas, Leah thought. She wistfully imagined the traditional Cornick family photo – and this time Leah wasn’t the outsider but had her own sister with her, one who also resented the ugly Christmas sweater tradition that Bran forced upon them.

Bran and Asil were bickering quietly about the names of the cloud formations, of all things, so Leah put her seat back, balling up the zipped, hooded sweater and attempted to get some sleep. She dozed fitfully until the first stop when Bran and Asil swapped and Bran bought snacks from the gas station.

“Did you speak to Kara?” Asil wanted to know as they all munched on chips and jerky.

“No. I messaged her last night and she said she’d come over after school today.” Leah frowned. “I suppose we don’t have a dining table any more. Where am I going to feed people? You can only fit four around the table in the kitchen. Six at a push.”

This established a conversation about the weather and how long before they could conceivably eat on the decking outside. Bran was of the opinion that people could just wear coats. Leah wanted food to stay hot. Unusually Asil agreed with Leah. This put Leah in a _very_ good mood. People rarely agreed with her.

“Tell me your plans for our living area,” Bran asked, glancing at her in the rear view mirror, eyes crinkled. 

She affected an innocent look. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I may have some small thoughts about the layout that I’d need to discuss with an architect first, of course.” Leah held up her thumb and index finger to emphasize just how ‘small’ these thoughts were.

“I thought as much. Tell me about these ‘thoughts’ now so I can come to terms with them.”

Leah held back a smile. The house – the style, the contents – was entirely her domain to do with as she wished. “I want to have one of those double sided fireplaces in the middle of the room.”

“Which would require moving the chimney. Check,” Bran said. Asil snorted.

“No, we wouldn’t have to do that, of course that would be stupid.” Leah paused for effect. “Instead, what I was thinking is, we could knock through the kitchen door into the breakfast room that we don’t use and extend the living area so we have a sort of nice, clean open plan space.”

Asil was laughing silently now.

“The kitchen that has suffered no discernable damage?” her husband asked her sweetly.

“Yes, that one. But it’s very outdated, Bran. That cherry wood.” She mock shuddered. “And the breakfast room has that lovely window-seat area. Wouldn’t that be perfect in the kitchen for our small family meals? So we might as well address that since we have to do these major works anyway.”

“Oh, might as well,” her husband said, voice as dry as the Sahara.

“Sounds completely logical,” Asil put in, clearly enjoying himself at Bran’s expense. “That breakfast room really is just wasted space.”

Leah beamed. “Exactly, Asil. You are a man of taste and refinement, how have I never noticed this about you before.” Bran laughed out loud, one of his good laughs. “And obviously the downstairs bathroom should be a wet room. That just makes sense. I could simply hose it down after full moon.”

“Now that one I can completely see,” Bran said. Again, he looked at her in the rear view mirror. His eyes were warm and affectionate and her heart seemed to swell in size. “Just a few ‘small thoughts’, then.”

“Just a few, yes.” Leah bit into her jerky triumphantly, confident she would get her way.

*

Even Leah was horrified to see for herself what was left of the living room, though the pack had done their level best to clear the debris and the furniture that was unsalvageable. She eyed the alcove where she knew she had been standing moments before the explosion – it was fire damaged and there was a chunk of steel embedded in it. Cold air whistled through the plastic sheeting that had been tacked to the missing expanse of wall.

“Is upstairs structurally sound?” she asked.

Tag nodded. “Had a couple of guys take a look at it on the quiet.”

Bran had taken one look at the space, cast Leah a fulminating look, and gone straight to his office. His door might have slammed closed, unless that was simply the wind tunnel created by the draft. He had been almost in a good mood, too, Leah thought sadly.

“We’ve got food keeping warm,” Charles murmured, looking at where Bran had gone. “Maybe a bowl of something hot will cheer Da up.”

“He needs the paperwork that will give him permission to kill Sabine,” Leah said, scowling. “Then he’ll be cheery.”

Charles bristled at her tone. “I’m working on it, Leah.”

Kara arrived so Leah took her bowl of casserole and dumplings upstairs to get the download from the teenager, sitting on her bed together.

Kara pulled her sleeves over her hands and fidgeted. “Mom is _pregnant_.”

“Noooooooo,” Leah said, spoon frozen in mid-air.

She had known Kara’s mother was dating someone, after divorcing Kara’s father, but didn’t think it had been long enough to have decided to have a child together. Surely it had only been a handful of months? For a human, wasn’t that reasonably quick? 

“She’s _ancient_ ,” Kara wailed, falling back on the back dramatically.

Leah took this about as well as could be expected since Kara’s mother was probably in her late thirties, though admittedly looked older than Leah did. “Apparently not ancient enough.” She cleared her throat, ate a chunk of carrot. “I’m sorry, darling, that’s very tough. I can see why you’re upset.”

As well as the usual teenage difficulties, coupled with being the youngest werewolf the world had ever seen, Kara had the extra pressure of knowing that her mother was _still_ frightened by her. She was simultaneously hurt and also disgusted by this and it tainted every interaction she had with her. Leah imagined she thought a new baby meant Kara’s mom could start over with a nice, normal _human_ child.

“Dad told me. She didn’t even have the decency to tell me herself and it’s due in, like, three months.”

“In three months?” Leah repeated, distracted. “Was it an accident?”

Kara paused. “I don’t know.” Like Leah, Kara did some rapid math. “Wow, maybe.”

“Do they even live together?”

“I… don’t know. I don’t think so.” Kara’s voice was becoming rapidly unsure as she climbed down from her righteous anger. She sat up on her elbows. “I mean. When I stayed with her at Christmas, _he_ definitely wasn’t there and I guess she was already knocked-up by then.”

Less ‘new and better family’ and more ‘accidental single mother’, Leah thought. She didn’t think Kara mother was particularly financially secure, either. Bran had been paying for everything almost since the day Kara arrived in Aspen Creek. She ate a dumpling. It was almost as good as hers. “What did your dad say?”

“Um. That he thought that I should know. That it didn’t change anything, Mom still loved me, yada yada yada.” All of this was delivered with an expression of utter disbelief.

Leah had once tried to suggest that it was perfectly possible for Kara’s mom to be afraid of her and still love her at the same time. It was a concept Kara struggled with.

“Well, as usual, this is another very difficult situation that you are going to have to deal with. And a baby does obviously change things, your father is woefully incorrect about that.” This bluntness was an approach Kara liked. She didn’t want any soft ‘you’ll be okay’ nonsense, not hugs and kisses. She wanted acknowledgement that things were hard and they were sometimes even harder for her. “I think your mother should have told you, certainly sooner than six months. You are mature enough to understand, even if you would naturally be upset. And, I guess, congratulations on your little brother or sister? Did your dad know which it would be?”

“I didn’t think to ask.”

“Your mom will probably know. Unless she wants it to be a surprise. More than, you know, it already was.”

Kara snorted. “I guess.” She sighed and it was one of Kara big, dramatic ones, complete with floppy hand gestures. She pushed her sleeves up her arms, a sure sign that she was feeling more decisive. “Okay. I feel less homicidal now. It’s just weird, you know? Like she’s replacing me.”

Leah would never get over Kara’s ability to process and just _adjust_. “Well, she’s never going to do that. But it also sounds like this wasn’t planned and she might not be doing this with a partner.”

“No. I guess that’s pretty scary. Having a kid on your own.” Kara swallowed, no doubt thinking this wasn’t a problem she was ever going to have. “I should probably call her.”

“Probably.”

The young woman’s hungry eyes landed on Leah’s bowl. Leah tucked it closer to herself. “Go get your own,” she said defensively.

*

They slept in Leah’s bed that night, a comfortable distance apart. Leah _might_ have scissor-ed her legs several times to relish the space, to Bran’s begrudging amusement. This had led to other, enthusiastic demonstrations of the advantages of more mattress space.

“Did you want the big window in the bathroom because you thought we’d need an escape route?” she asked as she was drifting off. She had been thinking about this, on and off. Sometimes Bran had very prescient whims.

There was a long silence. “It felt like it needed a big window.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It was a feeling.” Bran breathed and out in deeply. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

She fell asleep, having strange dreams about babies and clouds and the sound of tires on road, something flapping in the wind. Bran woke her only once, tossing and turning, stopping when she put a hand on his chest and draped a leg over his calf. He muttered ‘Thank you’ and then rolled onto his front and fell back to sleep.

It was the first good night’s sleep she felt she’d had in months and she woke just after 8am feeling like a new woman, entirely ready to tackle whatever the day, or her husband, threw at her. She dressed for a run, like she normally would, and bounced downstairs and then hesitated as she looked at the decimated living area. _Damn_ , she thought. Almost forgot.

“May I go for a run?” she asked, going into Bran’s office. He was sitting cross-legged in front of the fire; not a good sign.

“If you can find two members of our pack who can keep up with you, you may,” Bran replied.

She sneered. “I suppose _you_ are out of the question.”

“I am not in the mood to chase you through the forest, no.”

Leah picked the phone up off his desk and dialed Juste first. He accepted and said he would be right over. Next she tried Tag, Peggy and finally Asil – none of whom were available, though Asil’s excuse sounded like a half-lie. She was starting to pout. “Can it just be Juste?” she asked.

“No,” her husband said, not looking away from the fireplace.

Feeling pathetic, she called Charles. “Your father won’t let me go for a run unless I have two people with me. Juste has volunteered.”

“Are you asking me?”

Leah rolled her eyes. _Cornicks_. “ _Yes,_ Charles.”

“What a flattering offer. I think I could make time for that whilst this computer search runs to get you the paper trail you so desire,” Charles said drily. Leah winced, guiltily. “Anna was just saying how she would also enjoy a run.”

“Of course she was.” Could they even be apart? Ever? She put down the phone and leaned on Bran’s desk. “Done,” she said, vaguely triumphant.

Bran didn’t respond and she knew better than to pester him more when he was communing with his fire. She left him, closing the door quietly behind her.

Running with Charles, Juste and Anna was not awful. And that wasn’t just because she was obviously the quickest, which gave her some pleasure. Running was a normal activity, and the last few days – the last few weeks – hadn’t felt normal. In deference to their slowest runner, Anna, Leah took one of the shortest routes and they were back at the house by after 10am. Obviously, she was expected to feed everyone, so she made a round of breakfast burritos. To _go_.

“Do you really do that every day?” Anna asked as they were leaving.

“Normally,” she said. “Though not that easy trail.”

“ _Easy_?” Anna squawked. Laughing, Charles pushed his wife out the front door and left Leah alone.

*

The next few days were interesting.

Charles triumphantly presented Bran with a paper trial that not only traced several of the migration wolves back to Sabine but he also traced _her_ money back to one of the shell companies that he knew Chastel had owned. “She has probably used this method for carrying out various deeds for him,” Charles said, eyes fervent with hard-won knowledge. “So it was easy enough for her to set the attack up.”

“Good,” Bran said, finally pleased. “So we have testimonials from our guests downstairs. And now we have concrete evidence of who was funding their little endeavor. Very good.” He tapped his fingers on his desk. “I have to wonder how much Michel knows.”

“You really think he’s more powerful than he has let on?” Charles said, frowning. “That has never been my impression.”

Leah’s husband waved a hand in the air, a _comme ci comme ça_ gesture. “Too many coincidences of him being ‘beaten’ but surviving. Remember, he took out Bouchard and he was low down in the pack. Opportunity, perhaps, as is the way of all things. But maybe cunning.”

She felt uncomfortable for Aline. “If he was involved, then the relationship with Aline could have been entirely intentional.”

Bran had already thought of that. “Perhaps when he said that Sabine had not ‘found out’ it was because she had known all along.”

Leah was revolted. “I cannot imagine any woman agreeing to that for the sake of power, I really can’t.”

“Let’s hope for Aline’s case that is not so. And that Michel is wholly innocent.” Bran face lightened. “It would be nice to be wrong for once.”

Contrary to what everyone believed, the Marrok didn’t ‘rule’ with total autonomy. One of the reasons he needed the paperwork – apart from reassurance that they had the right perpetrator – was because there were a handful of old, lone wolves whom he ran his position by when he was going to make a big move on another continent. It was a little bit like an advisory board. If his mind was almost made up, he would occasionally just ignore their feedback, of course, and if she was honest this felt like one of those occasions.

A series of meetings were held in a circle in the pole barn and she was brought in as a witness, to stand in front of Bran and tell her side of the story. She wore a deliberately pretty dress, long and light and floaty, and kept her eyes lowered and demure. Bran was hard pressed to keep himself from laughing. But she knew these old wolves, knew that an attack of this scale on another Alpha’s mate, let alone the Marrok, was enough to put them on Bran’s side before the paper trail of money, bribery and the perversion of the migrations. After Bran had pulled out the two reasonably-well-treated guests from the basement with its silver cages, Leah listened to a lot of talk about _precedent_ and _proportional response_.

One, a man more commonly referred to as the Arbalester, muttered suspiciously, “This is an ugly business. An ugly man, that Chastel, and apparently his rot is still there for us all to deal with. These acts speak of a long grudge against you, Marrok.”

Bran shrugged, leaning back casually on the hay bale. “As is always the way.”

They had not, because the question had not been asked, revealed that Leah was Chastel’s daughter. Leah had been attacked because it would hurt Bran; they had left it at that. The fewer people who knew, the better. In the pack, they were keeping it within the family, plus Asil and Juste. When Sam came home at Christmas, they had agreed to tell him – particularly if Aline herself deigned to come and visit. Beyond that, it was at Leah’s discretion.

The old wolves were on Bran’s side – they agreed that it was an act of war - and slowly Bran’s mood improved. Now he and Charles’s minds turned to mapping the how, when and where. Periodically others were invited to join in this war council – Asil and Juste – and one afternoon, as each of them left a few minutes apart, they came to say goodbye to her, one by one. For everyone except for Juste, this was strange behavior. Charles treated their house much as he treated his own, coming and going whenever he wanted. Asil might not have been quite so lax, however if he came to see Bran, he certainly didn’t usually bother with the niceties towards her.

She gave Asil a very nonplussed look. “You too?” she said, having just seen off Juste and then Charles. She was back in the garage, putting together a second shelving system. With the rest of the house in the state it was in, she was having to give herself distractions. After this, she was going to go through the pantry and reorganize it. 

Asil tapped his fingers on the door frame of the garage, hesitating. “Yes. Your husband just clarified the situation regarding Mercedes.”

Leah froze. “He did?”

“We have been told not to be discrete with this information if the topic comes up amongst the rest of the pack.”

Leah couldn’t have been more surprised. “Thank you for telling me,” she said, formally. “What did he say?”

Asil pulled a very _this is so tedious_ face. “He disrespected you and treated you badly, blah blah blah, you had every right to be angry blah blah blah, go ask him yourself,” he said, in summary. Then he turned to go, hesitated, and came back. “Before, when they were attacking the house, I didn’t tell you what he said to us in full.”

“Go on,” she said, unsure why this mattered.

“He said, if you died, he would destroy the world.” Then Asil gave her a smirk and left.

A fully frozen-in-shock five minutes later, after Leah had done her best to process this and summarily failed, she went to see her mate. Bran was in his office, this time with his feet up on the desk, reading a book, looking ineffably casual. “Done already?” he asked, when she came in, referring to the shelves in the garage.

She stood, uncomfortably unsure of herself, in front of his desk. She decided to tackle the easy part. “You told them.”

He didn’t need more explanation than this. “I said I would do something about it. I will speak to Tag by himself. He, I feel, will have the most violent reaction,” Bran mused, clearly not relishing the prospect.

“Well, there’s a thing,” Leah muttered, referring more to the fact that the significance of this moment - something she had wanted for a long time - had paled in comparison to what Asil had just told her. 

Her husband rested the book on his chest. “You thought I wouldn’t.”

“Of course not,” Leah said dismissively. Bran, admit culpability? It was so unlikely. Destroy the world for her? Even more so, surely? Her brain hurt.

“Well, I did. It was almost cathartic. Juste was completely baffled by the whole thing, not knowing the third party in question. Charles already knew part of it, though by confirming it, he’s naturally plenty pissed at me now. To my surprise, Asil appeared to already know.” He lifted his eyebrows. “I presume you told him?”

Leah, who had reflexively scowled at his use of ‘third party’, waved a dismissive hand. “He overheard me on the phone to you. That time.”

“Ah. Was this part of how you ‘cleared the air’?” he asked.

She nodded. She sat in one of the three chairs that were arranged in front of his desk and looked at him. He looked back at her. “Thank you,” she said, eventually. “Poor Juste. What a lot of baggage he’s had to deal with from us.”

“He has his own,” Bran said mysteriously. He tossed the book onto his desk and stood up to stretch. “Can I help you with the shelves?”

She nodded and it was, as always, easier with two.

*

Whilst Bran and Charles put together their plan of action, Leah had a couple of different architects come and look at what she wanted to do with the living area and kitchen, as well as a builder they usually used because if they were going to have people in their house for weeks at a time, it had better be people they knew. The proposed works were a big job, at least three months of disruption, and during part of that time the kitchen would be out of action entirely.

Bran, of course, was not involved and expressed no opinion either way. “Experience tells me you’ll do what you want regardless,” he told her, adding, “and I’ll usually like the end result better.”

Leah found herself wandering the house with the proposal she most preferred, trying to work out how things would function during the works. There were several small rooms in the downstairs that they didn’t use. One she had nominally set aside as her own ‘office’ which sometimes served as an extra guest room. The breakfast room, which was never used. A room that backed onto the safe room where Bran kept all the fae artefacts and was, to everyone’s view, very spooky as a consequence. It was just always warmer than any other room in the house and smelled a little funny. Then there was the second living room area where she kept her sewing machine and a few other arts and crafts hobbies she had dabbled in over the years. It was too close to Bran’s office, which was why they had stopped using it – either the pack was too loud or he was having sensitive conversations that he didn’t want the Aspen Creek wolves to overhear.

She could move the refrigerator into her ‘office’, along with some electric hotplates, she decided. She bet she could cook up enough batches for the deep freeze that would keep them going, anyway, and use a microwave. And the pack could congregate in the smaller living room. It would be less comfortable but it would be only temporary.

She told Bran this as he was undressing her one night, so he would be prepared for the noise. “I’m glad you made a decision,” he said to her neck, popping the buttons of her blouse.

Leah ran her fingers lazily through his hair. “You’ll hate it. You’ll be grumpy,” she sighed, then sighed again for a different reason as her knees went weak when he used his teeth. 

“Of this I have no—” He paused, looking down, and smiled. “Oh,” he said.

The mint-colored underwear, from a very high end lingerie company, had arrived the day before. Whilst she loved clothes, she was usually more interested in what was visible – as that was what conveyed the impression she was intending to give. Underneath was another matter. Delicate lingerie such as this was not the sort of thing she normally wore, given their active lifestyles, and she’d been wearing it all day feeling vaguely subversive. 

Bran traced the plunging scalloped lace edge with a finger. His face was soft. She shrugged off the blouse and undid the fly of her jeans herself, slid them down to show him the accompanying panties, a near-match of the ones from the grocery store that he had so liked. “Oh yes,” he said appreciatively, the soft expression ebbing into something significantly warmer, the smile becoming one laced with intent.

She reached behind herself to undo the clasp of the bra and he grabbed her wrists. “No, don’t take it off.”

Leah obeyed, even if it rapidly demonstrated that it wasn’t structurally appropriate for the enthusiasm of the occasion, which Bran breathlessly informed her was definitely part of the appeal. This made her splutter a laugh, which made him laugh, and then they collapsed on each other and she didn’t think she had laughed so much _mid-coitus_ in her life.

“Were you wearing this all day?” he asked her, afterwards, rearranging her breasts back into the skimpy cups himself.

“Yes.”

“I knew something was off. You were walking differently.”

“It made me _feel_ different. Sexy,” she admitted, pursing her lips. It was not a word she would regularly apply to herself. She was too tall for sexy. Too thin. Too many sharp edges.

Bran leaned down to kiss her and lingered. “You are,” he said, as if he had heard her inner thoughts.

It was probably one of the nicest things he had ever said to her. Romantic, even. Her heart swelled and with it a lump in her throat. She swallowed it down. That had been happening a lot recently. She kissed him back, lightly. “Thank you. Maybe for your birthday, I’ll get the red one.”

“I sense my birthday is coming very soon,” he said, moving to kiss her shoulder.

She exhaled a laugh and then turned on her side to face him. Since they had come home, Bran had slept in her bed every night and many of their evenings, and nights, had turned into this – enjoying one another, then talking and touching each other. It was different then had it had been before, even without knowing Asil’s so-helpful recollection of her husband’s anguish when they had been under attack. If she had been Anna, she mused, she would have probably asked Bran about it. But they had talked about their _feelings_ enough recently. Their marriage was a long journey, with ups as well as downs, and she could let this lie, for now, and just enjoy it. He might love her, now, he might not. She knew he cared. That was enough.

But tonight, in much the same way he had noticed she was walking differently – ridiculous – she knew he had something serious to tell her. “Go on, I’m suitably mollified,” she said, rearranging the hair that had fallen over his forehead. She liked his hair long enough so that she could grab hold of it but it was getting a little unkempt now.

“I will go to Europe the day after tomorrow. London, first, ostensibly to deal with the mess Madden’s absence has left in the British Isles, then on to France more subversively.” Bubbles of anxiety burst in her stomach. She had known this was coming, it was no surprise, but hearing the words leave his mouth was a different story. She would miss him, _dreadfully_. “Charles will stay here but I would ask that you come with me.”

Her eyebrows nearly met her hairline with her surprise. She could count on one hand the number of times Bran had invited her to accompany him on a work trip. She was… delighted. She couldn’t hold back the smile. “Really?”

“Putting aside the fact that Charles is still tracking down the other migration wolves who might be on Sabine’s payroll, it will be distracting for me when you are here and I’m halfway around the world.”

“You would worry about me,” Leah said, still smiling. Satisfied. 

“Both I and my monster would worry about you, even though I know well you can take care of yourself,” Bran clarified, almost defensively. He touched the pad of his thumb to her lower lip and then leaned forward to nip her. “Will you come with me, Leah?”

“Of course,” Leah said unwaveringly. She bared her teeth and nipped him back. “I’d love to.”

“Good,” her mate said, wrapping an arm about her and rolling her on top of him. It was, without question, a hug. “Besides, I thought you’d maybe like to kill her yourself.”

Leah felt a rush of what was unmistakably bloodlust. She lightly bit his shoulder in excitement, wriggling against him. “Oh, _that_ I would definitely like.”

“Good.” Hands roaming her body in a distracting way, Bran sighed. “Then, I thought, we might take a little vacation.”

Leah sat up, straddling him, eyeing him suspiciously. He looked, there was no other word for it, happy. “A vacation,” she repeated. “Have you been possessed?” 

Her husband grinned. “No. But I think I might have my birthday on this vacation. _Every day_.”

She laughed and then she realized what he was about. She groaned. “This is so you don’t have to be here whilst they’re working on the house, isn’t it?”

“Ah, you’ve seen through my cunning plan.”

“Bran…” He was ridiculous. And trying _too hard_ to be charming. It was suspicious.

“We have never taken a vacation.” Bran pretended to ponder this. He stroked her thighs, thumbs cruising the tender skin on the inside, making her shiver as he circled towards his inevitable conclusion. “We could, in fact, classify it as our honeymoon, if you feel we need to justify it. There’s no time limit on honeymoons, I’m told.”

Leah narrowed her eyes. He was too much. “No, really. Who are you planning to terrorize in Europe? Tell me. Is it Libor? That old wolf in Croatia, what’s his name – Josip?”

One thumb slid between her legs, parting her. His eyes glittered. “Would you like to go to Croatia? We have a hotel there. I’ve never seen it.”

She gave up and sighed, tilting her head back and moving her hips against his thumb, which was moving a little too slowly. “You’re impossible.”

“And you love me anyway,” he told her.

Her breath hitched. “Yes, I do,” she replied, easily enough. Whilst it wasn’t something she frequently volunteered, she didn’t mind admitting to it. It was odd for him bring it up, though.

Bran rose up to kiss her, tongue hot and wet in her mouth, hands clasping the sides of her face. “Leah, you _must_ know,” he whispered urgently against her lips, eyes so close they were nothing but pools of black. “You must.”

“Know what?” she whispered in return, mesmerized. She tilted her head to the side, caught his bottom lip between her teeth, and then released him. She pulled back so she could focus on his face and saw that there was fear there. She held a hand against his cheek in concern. “Know what, Bran?”

His thumbs moved, stroking either side of her mouth, his eyes flicking over her. “You must know, I would destroy the world over you,” Bran said and suddenly there was a chill in the air as his power leaked from him, as he imagined the circumstances in which this would happen. The hairs on her arms stood to attention. “I would have no choice.”

She nodded slowly in understanding. This was how their kind of love was going to be, she thought. She reached up to hold his wrists, squeezed them. “Yes. I know that, now.”

It seemed she finally had what she had always wanted. And now she would have to live with the consequences.

END

**Author's Note:**

> And they lived happily ever after. 
> 
> OK. Fine. Leah gets to kill Sabine - with her favourite hunting knife, there's lots of blood, she's a very happy bunny - and then she and Bran go on vacation in Europe, which had been pretty much off limits for obvious reasons. They do go to Croatia and Leah spends the entire time completely convinced Bran is going to make her go off and hunt down some old wolf who was up to no good. He doesn't. Mostly they have semi-public sex on the balcony of their penthouse suite. They spend some time in Italy, visiting vineyards. Bran has his 'birthday' several times over. They visit Asil's sons in Spain and Leah stocks up on embarrassing family stories. They send a LOT of selfies to Charles and Anna, who basically think they've lost their minds.


End file.
